Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The paper presents a technically interesting approach. However, the authors should clarify more explicitly how the proposed methodology differs from the related work by Dunjko, Ge, and Cirac:

V. Dunjko, Y. Ge, and J. I. Cirac, “Computational Speedups Using Small Quantum Devices,” Physical Review Letters, vol. 121, no. 25, p. 250501, 2018. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.250501.

In particular, the authors should explain the specific methodological and/or algorithmic contributions of the present work relative to this reference and identify what is fundamentally new.

In addition, the authors should clarify the precise nature of the proposed algorithm. Is it intended as a satisfiability search algorithm that produces a satisfying assignment, or as a bounded-error decision algorithm that determines whether a satisfying assignment exists? The distinction is important for interpreting the algorithm's objectives, complexity, and claimed performance.

The paper would also benefit from a stronger analysis of the effects of state-preparation errors and the overall robustness of the proposed quantum-classical procedure. The authors should discuss how such errors affect the success probability and performance of the algorithm, as well as the assumptions required for reliable implementation. A more detailed accounting of the relevant quantum and classical resource requirements would also strengthen the paper.

Finally, some of the claims concerning the classical 3-SAT benchmarks should be carefully revisited and corrected where necessary. The comparison with classical methods should use clearly specified benchmark instances, algorithms, parameter settings, and performance measures so that the reported quantum-classical advantage, if any, can be evaluated accurately and reproducibly.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Please refer to the attached pdf file.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for addressing the comments.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The Authors have effectively addressed all my comments and remarks and the overall quality and readability of the manuscript have been improved.
I can thus recommend its acceptance.