Gap Sensitivity and Bottleneck Migration in Sparse Constraint-Preserving Quantum Annealing
The paper investigates how changing a physical exchange in a quantum annealing driver affects its minimum gap. It finds that local sensitivity predicts beneficial infinitesimal changes, but finite modifications cause 'bottleneck migration,' where an active bottleneck moves to expose a new, competing minimum. Relinearizing the response at resolved exchanges is more reliable than simple continuation.