A cross-disciplinary introduction to quantum annealing-based algorithms

Understand

A central goal in quantum computing is the development of quantum hardware and quantum algorithms in order to analyse challenging scientific and engineering problems.

• Research in quantum computation involves contributions from both physics and computer science, hence this article presents a concise introduction to basic concepts from both fields that are used in annealing-based quantum computation, an alternative to the more familiar quantum gate model.
• We introduce some concepts from computer science required to define difficult computational problems and to realise the potential relevance of quantum algorithms to find novel solutions to those problems.
• We introduce the structure of quantum annealing-based algorithms as well as two examples of this kind of algorithms for solving instances of the max-SAT and Minimum Multicut problems.