No Arabic abstract
Theory of computer calculations strongly depends on the nature of elements the computer is made of. Quantum interference allows to formulate the Shor factorization algorithm turned out to be more effective than any one written for classical computers. Similarly, quantum wave packet reduction allows to devise the Grover search algorithm which outperforms any classical one. In the present paper we argue that the quantum incoherent tunneling can be used for elaboration of new algorithms able to solve some NP-hard problems, such as the Traveling Salesman Problem, considered to be intractable in the classical theory of computer computations.
With progress in quantum technology more sophisticated quantum annealing devices are becoming available. While they offer new possibilities for solving optimization problems, their true potential is still an open question. As the optimal design of adiabatic algorithms plays an important role in their assessment, we illustrate the aspects and challenges to consider when implementing optimization problems on quantum annealing hardware based on the example of the traveling salesman problem (TSP). We demonstrate that tunneling between local minima can be exponentially suppressed if the quantum dynamics are not carefully tailored to the problem. Furthermore we show that inequality constraints, in particular, present a major hurdle for the implementation on analog quantum annealers. We finally argue that programmable digital quantum annealers can overcome many of these obstacles and can - once large enough quantum computers exist - provide an interesting route to using quantum annealing on a large class of problems.
A new characterisation of Hamiltonian graphs using f-cutset matrix is proposed. A new exact polynomial time algorithm for the travelling salesman problem (TSP) based on this new characterisation is developed. We then define so called ordered weighted adjacency list for given weighted complete graph and proceed to the main result of the paper, namely, the exact algorithm based on utilisation of ordered weighted adjacency list and the simple properties that any path or circuit must satisfy. This algorithm performs checking of sub-lists, containing (p-1) entries (edge pairs) for paths and p entries (edge pairs) for circuits, chosen from ordered adjacency list in a well defined sequence to determine exactly the shortest Hamiltonian path and shortest Hamiltonian circuit in a weighted complete graph of p vertices. The procedure has intrinsic advantage of landing on the desired solution in quickest possible time and even in worst case in polynomial time. A new characterisation of shortest Hamiltonian tour for a weighted complete graph satisfying triangle inequality (i.e. for tours passing through every city on a realistic map of cities where cities can be taken as points on a Euclidean plane) is also proposed. Finally, we propose a classical algorithm for unstructured search and also three new quantum algorithms for unstructured search which exponentially speed up the searching ability in the unstructured database and discuss its effect on the NP-Complete problems.
We present the first nontrivial approximation algorithm for the bottleneck asymmetric traveling salesman problem. Given an asymmetric metric cost between n vertices, the problem is to find a Hamiltonian cycle that minimizes its bottleneck (or maximum-length edge) cost. We achieve an O(log n / log log n) approximation performance guarantee by giving a novel algorithmic technique to shortcut Eulerian circuits while bounding the lengths of the shortcuts needed. This allows us to build on a related result of Asadpour, Goemans, Mk{a}dry, Oveis Gharan, and Saberi to obtain this guarantee. Furthermore, we show how our technique yields stronger approximation bounds in some cases, such as the bounded orientable genus case studied by Oveis Gharan and Saberi. We also explore the possibility of further improvement upon our main result through a comparison to the symmetric counterpart of the problem.
We give a constant factor approximation algorithm for the asymmetric traveling salesman problem when the support graph of the solution of the Held-Karp linear programming relaxation has bounded orientable genus.
We study the variant of the Euclidean Traveling Salesman problem where instead of a set of points, we are given a set of lines as input, and the goal is to find the shortest tour that visits each line. The best known upper and lower bounds for the problem in $mathbb{R}^d$, with $dge 3$, are $mathrm{NP}$-hardness and an $O(log^3 n)$-approximation algorithm which is based on a reduction to the group Steiner tree problem. We show that TSP with lines in $mathbb{R}^d$ is APX-hard for any $dge 3$. More generally, this implies that TSP with $k$-dimensional flats does not admit a PTAS for any $1le k leq d-2$ unless $mathrm{P}=mathrm{NP}$, which gives a complete classification of the approximability of these problems, as there are known PTASes for $k=0$ (i.e., points) and $k=d-1$ (hyperplanes). We are able to give a stronger inapproximability factor for $d=O(log n)$ by showing that TSP with lines does not admit a $(2-epsilon)$-approximation in $d$ dimensions under the unique games conjecture. On the positive side, we leverage recent results on restricted variants of the group Steiner tree problem in order to give an $O(log^2 n)$-approximation algorithm for the problem, albeit with a running time of $n^{O(loglog n)}$.