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Quantum Simulations of Classical Annealing Processes

Published

Author(s)

Rolando Somma, S. Boixo, Howard Barnum, Emanuel Knill

Abstract

We describe a quantum algorithm that solves combinatorial optimization problems by quantum simulation of a classical simulated annealing process. Our algorithm exploits quantum walks and the quantum Zeno effect induced by evolution randomization. It requires order 1/sqrt(delta) steps to find an optimal solution with bounded error probability, where delta is the minimum spectral gap of the stochastic matrices used in the classical annealing process. This is a quadratic improvement over the order 1/delta steps required by the latter.
Citation
Physical Review Letters
Volume
101

Keywords

quantum computing, quantum algorithms, Monte Carlo Markov chains, simulated annealing

Citation

Somma, R. , Boixo, S. , Barnum, H. and Knill, E. (2008), Quantum Simulations of Classical Annealing Processes, Physical Review Letters (Accessed April 18, 2024)
Created September 25, 2008, Updated October 12, 2021