arXiv subjects

Yassine Naghmouchi

Publications and source records attributed to Yassine Naghmouchi.

2 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Satellite Mission Planning with Rydberg Atoms

Quantum computers relying on cold atoms are being built and promise a high flexibility in the way information in encoded into the physical system. In particular, the analog mode is spiking interest in the field of optimization as a classically intractable number of configurations can be tackled. In this work, we investigate a problem that requires every-day scheduling of critical tasks involving a large number of actors. Namely, fixing the planning for a Earth Observation satellite fleet composed of several of units exposed to a high density of targets to be scanned. We explore numerical schemes that convert the formulated problem into a cold-atoms friendly setup. We begin by a naive formulation of the Satellite Mission Planning problem without taking account for the agility of the satellites. We then extend the problem to take it into account based on the literature. By formulating the planning problem as a Maximum Independent Set problem, we are able to solve the problem with a QPU based on Rydberg atoms. We explore two ways of solving the MIS problem on the QPU, one relying on the graphs and on the Quadratic Unconstrained Binary Optimization Framework (QUBO). We show that the QUBO methodology is the most relevant and explore it more deeply with numerical experiments. We conclude on the potential utility of using a QPU to solve the Satellite Mission Planning problem in an operational context.

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arXiv2025

Identifying hard native instances for the maximum independent set problem on neutral atoms quantum processors

The Maximum Independent Set (MIS) problem is a fundamental combinatorial optimization task that can be naturally mapped onto the Ising Hamiltonian of neutral atom quantum processors. Given its connection to NP-hard problems and real-world applications, there has been significant experimental interest in exploring quantum advantage for MIS. Pioneering experiments on King's Lattice graphs suggested a quadratic speed-up over simulated annealing, but recent benchmarks using state-of-the-art methods found no clear advantage, likely due to the structured nature of the tested instances. In this work, we generate hard instances of unit-disk graphs by leveraging complexity theory results and varying key hardness parameters such as density and treewidth. For a fixed graph size, we show that increasing these parameters can lead to prohibitive classical runtime increases of several orders of magnitude. We then compare classical and quantum approaches on small instances and find that, at this scale, quantum solutions are slower than classical ones for finding exact solutions. Based on extended classical benchmarks at larger problem sizes, we estimate that scaling up to a thousand atoms with a 1 kHz repetition rate is a necessary step toward demonstrating a computational advantage with quantum methods.

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