Tunneling vs. thermal hopping through energy landscapes
Adjust parameters and run annealing.
Quantum annealing uses quantum tunneling to escape local minima in optimization landscapes. Where thermal annealing must climb over barriers (Boltzmann factor e^(-ΔE/kT)), quantum annealing can tunnel through them with amplitude proportional to the transverse field Γ. As Γ → 0, the system localizes in the global minimum. The WKB tunneling amplitude decays as exp(-barrier_width × √(2mΔE)/ℏ) — narrow, tall barriers favor quantum over classical. D-Wave machines implement this physically with superconducting flux qubits.