Classical Thermometry of Quantum Annealers

Quantum Physics arXiv:2512.03162 (quant-ph) [Submitted on 2 Dec 2025] Title:Classical Thermometry of Quantum Annealers Authors:George Grattan, Pratik Sathe, Cristiano Nisoli View a PDF of the paper titled Classical Thermometry of Quantum Annealers, by George Grattan and 2 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:Quantum annealers are emerging as programmable, dynamical experimental platforms for probing strongly correlated spin systems. Yet key thermal assumptions, chiefly a Gibbs-distributed output ensemble, remain unverified in the large-scale regime. Here, we experimentally and quantitatively assess Gibbs sampling fidelity across system sizes spanning over three orders of magnitude. We explore a wide parameter space of coupling strengths, system sizes, annealing times, and D-wave hardware architectures. We find that the naively assumed scaling law for the effective temperature requires a non-negligible, coupling-independent offset that is robust across machines and parameter regimes, quantifying residual non-thermal effects that still conform to an effective Gibbs description. These non-idealities are further reflected in a systematic discrepancy between the physical temperature inferred from the sampled ensemble and the nominal cryogenic temperature of the device. Our results systematically assess the viability of quantum annealers as experimental platforms for probing classical thermodynamics, correct previous assumptions, and provide a physically grounded thermometry framework to benchmark these machines for future thermodynamic experiments. Comments: Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Disordered Systems and Neural Networks (cond-mat.dis-nn); Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) Cite as: arXiv:2512.03162 [quant-ph] (or arXiv:2512.03162v1 [quant-ph] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2512.03162 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration) Submission history From: Pratik Sathe [view email] [v1] Tue, 2 Dec 2025 19:08:06 UTC (5,065 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled Classical Thermometry of Quantum Annealers, by George Grattan and 2 other authorsView PDFHTML (experimental)TeX Source view license Current browse context: quant-ph new | recent | 2025-12 Change to browse by: cond-mat cond-mat.dis-nn cond-mat.stat-mech References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADSGoogle Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Loading... BibTeX formatted citation × loading... Data provided by: Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub (What is DagsHub?) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?) Links to Code Toggle Papers with Code (What is Papers with Code?) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate (What is Replicate?) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender (What is CORE?) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs. Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)