Exact Cover with Light

We suggest a new optical solution for solving the YES/NO version of the Exact Cover problem by using the massive parallelism of light. The idea is to build an optical device which can generate all possible solutions of the problem and then to pick the correct one. In our case the device has a graph-...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inNew generation computing Vol. 26; no. 4; pp. 329 - 346
Main Authors Oltean, Mihai, Muntean, Oana
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Heidelberg Verlag Omsha Tokio 01.08.2008
Subjects
Artificial Intelligence
Computer Hardware
Computer Science
Computer Systems Organization and Communication Networks
Software Engineering/Programming and Operating Systems
Optical Computing
NP-complete Problems
Exact Cover
Unconventional Computing
Natural Computing
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Summary:We suggest a new optical solution for solving the YES/NO version of the Exact Cover problem by using the massive parallelism of light. The idea is to build an optical device which can generate all possible solutions of the problem and then to pick the correct one. In our case the device has a graph-like representation and the light is traversing it by following the routes given by the connections between nodes. The nodes are connected by arcs in a special way which lets us to generate all possible covers (exact or not) of the given set. For selecting the correct solution we assign to each item, from the set to be covered, a special integer number. These numbers will actually represent delays induced to light when it passes through arcs. The solution is represented as a subray arriving at a certain moment in the destination node. This will tell us if an exact cover does exist or not.
ISSN:0288-3635
1882-7055
DOI:10.1007/s00354-008-0049-5