Quantum annealing for nearest neighbour compliance problem

• Published in: Scientific reports Vol. 14; no. 1; pp. 23340 - 15
• Main Authors: Müller, Sven, Phillipson, Frank
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 07.10.2024; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 639/705/1041; 639/766/483/481; Algorithms; Compliance; Computers; Embedding; Gate-based quantum computers; Graphs; Heuristic; Humanities and Social Sciences; Linear programming; multidisciplinary; Nearest neighbour compliance problem; Quantum annealing; Quantum computing; Quantum physics; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); SWAP optimisation; SWAP optimisation; Nearest neighbour compliance problem; Quantum annealing; Gate-based quantum computers
• ISSN: 2045-2322; 2045-2322
• DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-73882-y

Quantum Computing has emerged as a promising alternative, utilising quantum mechanics for faster computations. This paper explores the nearest neighbour compliance (NNC) Problem in Gate-based Quantum Computers, where quantum gates are constrained to operate on physically adjacent qubits. The NNC problem aims to optimise the insertion of SWAP-gates to ensure compliance with these constraints while minimising their count. This work introduces Quantum Annealing to tackle the NNC problem, proposing two Quadratic Unconstrained Optimisation Problem formulations. The formulations are tested on a contemporary Quantum Annealer, and their performance is compared with previous methods. It shows that the prospect of using Quantum Annealing is promising, however, the current state of the hardware makes that finding the embedding is the limiting factor.