Boltzmann Reinforcement Learning for Noise resilience in Analog Ising Machines

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Choudhary, Aditya, Desai, Saaketh, Iyer, Prasad
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Choudhary, Aditya
Desai, Saaketh
Iyer, Prasad
author_facet Choudhary, Aditya
Desai, Saaketh
Iyer, Prasad
contents Analog Ising machines (AIMs) have emerged as a promising paradigm for combinatorial optimization, utilizing physical dynamics to solve Ising problems with high energy efficiency. However, the performance of traditional optimization and sampling algorithms on these platforms is often limited by inherent measurement noise. We introduce BRAIN (Boltzmann Reinforcement for Analog Ising Networks), a distribution learning framework that utilizes variational reinforcement learning to approximate the Boltzmann distribution. By shifting from state-by-state sampling to aggregating information across multiple noisy measurements, BRAIN is resilient to Gaussian noise characteristic of AIMs. We evaluate BRAIN across diverse combinatorial topologies, including the Curie-Weiss and 2D nearest-neighbor Ising systems. We find that under realistic 3\% Gaussian measurement noise, BRAIN maintains 98\% ground state fidelity, whereas Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods degrade to 51\% fidelity. Furthermore, BRAIN reaches the MCMC-equivalent solution up to 192x faster under these conditions. BRAIN exhibits $\mathcal{O}(N^{1.55})$ scaling up to 65,536 spins and maintains robustness against severe measurement uncertainty up to 40\%. Beyond ground state optimization, BRAIN accurately captures thermodynamic phase transitions and metastable states, providing a scalable and noise-resilient method for utilizing analog computing architectures in complex optimizations.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_09162
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Boltzmann Reinforcement Learning for Noise resilience in Analog Ising Machines
Choudhary, Aditya
Desai, Saaketh
Iyer, Prasad
Machine Learning
Materials Science
Analog Ising machines (AIMs) have emerged as a promising paradigm for combinatorial optimization, utilizing physical dynamics to solve Ising problems with high energy efficiency. However, the performance of traditional optimization and sampling algorithms on these platforms is often limited by inherent measurement noise. We introduce BRAIN (Boltzmann Reinforcement for Analog Ising Networks), a distribution learning framework that utilizes variational reinforcement learning to approximate the Boltzmann distribution. By shifting from state-by-state sampling to aggregating information across multiple noisy measurements, BRAIN is resilient to Gaussian noise characteristic of AIMs. We evaluate BRAIN across diverse combinatorial topologies, including the Curie-Weiss and 2D nearest-neighbor Ising systems. We find that under realistic 3\% Gaussian measurement noise, BRAIN maintains 98\% ground state fidelity, whereas Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods degrade to 51\% fidelity. Furthermore, BRAIN reaches the MCMC-equivalent solution up to 192x faster under these conditions. BRAIN exhibits $\mathcal{O}(N^{1.55})$ scaling up to 65,536 spins and maintains robustness against severe measurement uncertainty up to 40\%. Beyond ground state optimization, BRAIN accurately captures thermodynamic phase transitions and metastable states, providing a scalable and noise-resilient method for utilizing analog computing architectures in complex optimizations.
title Boltzmann Reinforcement Learning for Noise resilience in Analog Ising Machines
topic Machine Learning
Materials Science
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.09162