{"paper":{"title":"Assessing Cost Hamiltonian Reliability in Quantum Protein Structure Prediction","license":"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":[],"primary_cat":"quant-ph","authors_text":"Cedric Damour, Frederic Cadet, Jingbo Wang, Mathieu Roget","submitted_at":"2026-06-19T09:09:13Z","abstract_excerpt":"In variational quantum algorithms, QAOA, and quantum annealing, the cost Hamiltonian defines the optimization landscape explored by the quantum hardware; however, in many application-driven formulations, this Hamiltonian is a simplified proxy for the true task-level objective. Using lattice-based quantum protein structure prediction as a case study, we investigate whether the contact-energy cost Hamiltonian commonly used in this setting is sufficiently aligned with structural accuracy, as measured by RMSD against experimentally determined structures. Through this specific problem, we show the "},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"2606.21241","kind":"arxiv","version":1},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2606.21241/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[],"snapshot_sha256":"c28c3603d3b5d939e8dc4c7e95fa8dfce3d595e45f758748cecf8e644a296938"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}