Optimization by quantum annealing: Lessons from hard satisfiability problems

The path integral Monte Carlo simulated quantum annealing algorithm is applied to the optimization of a large hard instance of the random satisfiability problem (N=10 000). The dynamical behavior of the quantum and the classical annealing are compared, showing important qualitative differences in the way of exploring the complex energy landscape of the combinatorial optimization problem. At variance with the results obtained for the Ising spin glass and for the traveling salesman problem, in the present case the linear-schedule quantum annealing performance is definitely worse than classical annealing. Nevertheless, a quantum cooling protocol based on field-cycling and able to outperform standard classical simulated annealing over short time scales is introduced.