Hybrid Quantum Annealing for Clustering Problems

We develop a hybrid type of quantum annealing in which we control temperature and quantum field simultaneously. We study the efficiency of proposed quantum annealing and find a good schedule of changing thermal fluctuation and quantum fluctuation. In this paper, we focus on clustering problems which are important topics in information science and engineering. We obtain the better solution of the clustering problem than the standard simulated annealing by proposed quantum annealing.