HEISINGBERG · Spatial Quantum Optical Annealer for Spin Hamiltonians

Optical simulators rank among the most promising candidates to power future technological breakthroughs in terms of speed,scalability, power-consumption and quantum advantage, serving a wide range of useful optimization problems. However, theoperation of such simulators remains currently limited by noise, the extent of algorithmic problems they can embed and to theclassical regime where they compete with supercomputers. HEISINGBERG aims to bring our state-of-the-art spatial photonic spinsimulator (an iterated cycle of all-optical processing through a spatial light modulator that couples 10,000 spins) into the quantumregime by upgrading its coherent drive to squeezed light, making it fully programmable through vector-matrix multiplicationschemes, use of holography, ancillary spins & effective magnetic fields, and designing dedicated custom-tailored and purpose-builtalgorithms. The reduced fluctuations in one quadrature of the fields will allow us to scale up and optimize the performances of theexisting machine to bring it beyond the capabilities of both classical supercomputers and competing spin-simulators. HEISINGBERGdevices will operate 100,000 spins at room temperature and process new quantum annealing algorithms on an improved XYarchitecture. Besides, the nonclassical resources of squeezed states when modulated, admixed and phase-controlled through beamsplitters, such as entanglement or superpositions of multiphoton states will be prospected to harness a quantum advantage andboost our machine into its quantum simulation regime. This development will stimulate the quantum information processingcommunity by concretely articulating problems of algorithmic complexity and clarify the nature of the quantum advantage availablein annealers and simulators. These advances will allow us to demonstrate, on a cloud platform, annealing and adiabatic algorithmsthat can efficiently solve NP-hard problems.