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arXiv · 0804.1571

Quantum Simulations of Classical Annealing Processes

R. D. Somma·S. Boixo·H. Barnum·E. Knill
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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 $1/\sqrtδ$ steps to find an optimal solution with bounded error probability, where $δ$ is the minimum spectral gap of the stochastic matrices used in the classical annealing process. This is a quadratic improvement over the order $1/δ$ steps required by the latter.

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R. D. Somma, S. Boixo, H. Barnum, E. Knill. 2008-04-09. Quantum Simulations of Classical Annealing Processes. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.101.130504

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