An introduction to quantum annealing

Understand

Quantum Annealing, or Quantum Stochastic Optimization, is a classical randomized algorithm which provides good heuristics for the solution of hard optimization problems.

• The algorithm, suggested by the behaviour of quantum systems, is an example of proficuous cross contamination between classical and quantum computer science.
• In this survey paper we illustrate how hard combinatorial problems are tackled by quantum computation and present some examples of the heuristics provided by Quantum Annealing.
• We also present preliminary results about the application of quantum dissipation (as an alternative to Imaginary Time Evolution) to the task of driving a quantum system toward its state of lowest energy.