A hybrid scheme for prime factorization and its experimental implementation using IBM quantum processor

Abstract

We report a quantum-classical hybrid scheme for factorization of bi-prime numbers (which are odd and square-free) using IBM's quantum processors. The hybrid scheme proposed here involves both classical optimization techniques and adiabatic quantum optimization techniques, and is build by extending a previous scheme of hybrid factorization [Pal et al., Pramana 92, 26 (2019) and Xu et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 130501 (2012)]. The quantum part of the scheme is very general in the sense that it can be implemented using any quantum computing architecture. Here, as an example, we experimentally implement our scheme for prime factorization using IBM's QX4 quantum processor and have factorised 35.