PhD defence

Applications of quantum annealing in combinatorial optimization

• S. Yarkoni

Date

Tuesday 20 December 2022

Time

11:15 - 12:00 hour

Address

Academy Building
Rapenburg 73
2311 GJ Leiden

Summary

Quantum computing is a potentially disruptive technology which aims to solve fundamentally difficult problems in a variety of domain areas. In this thesis, one specific paradigm called quantum annealing is evaluated in the context of combinatorial optimization. The specific implementation of the quantum annealing algorithm in hardware is explored in depth, and various approaches to map real-world optimization problems to such a quantum processor are presented. Hybrid quantum-classical algorithms are tested both in their use of improving the quantum hardware performance and to address larger-scale problems. The overall potential and limitations of quantum annealing approaches are examined through the testing of canonical problems (maximum independent set) and real-world motivated problems (such as logistics, production, and traffic optimization). Results show how certain classes of combinatorial optimization problems may benefit from quantum annealing approaches and how applications using such quantum algorithms may be constructed in the future.

Supervisor(s)

• Prof. T.H.W. Bäck
• Prof. A. Plaat

PhD dissertations

Approximately one week after the defence, PhD dissertations by Leiden PhD students are available digitally through the Leiden Repository, that offers free access to these PhD dissertations. Please note that in some cases a dissertation may be under embargo temporarily and access to its full-text version will only be granted later.

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