Statistical Mechanics Calculations Using Variational Autoregressive Networks and Quantum Annealing

In statistical mechanics, computing the partition function is generally difficult. An approximation method using a variational autoregressive network (VAN) has been proposed recently. This approach offers the advantage of directly calculating the generation probabilities while obtaining a significantly large number of samples. The present study introduces a novel approximation method that employs samples derived from quantum annealing machines in conjunction with VAN, which are empirically assumed to adhere to the Gibbs-Boltzmann distribution. When applied to the finite-size Sherrington-Kirkpatrick model, the proposed method demonstrates enhanced accuracy compared to the traditional VAN approach and other approximate methods, such as the widely utilized naive mean field.