The traveling salesman problem is considered a prime example of a combinatorial optimization problem. Now a team has shown that a certain class of such problems can actually be solved better and much faster with quantum computers than with conventional methods.
The travelling salesman problem is considered a prime example of a combinatorial optimisation problem. Now a Berlin team led by theoretical physicist Prof. Dr. Jens Eisert of Freie Universität Berlin and HZB has shown that a certain class of such problems can actually be solved better and much faster with quantum computers than with conventional methods.
Quantum computers use so-called qubits, which are not either zero or one as in conventional logic circuits, but can take on any value in between. These qubits are realised by highly cooled atoms, ions or superconducting circuits, and it is still physically very complex to build a quantum computer with many qubits. However, mathematical methods can already be used to explore what fault-tolerant quantum computers could achieve in the future.
The well-known problem of the travelling salesman serves as a prime example: A traveller has to visit a number of cities and then return to his home town. Which is the shortest route? Although this problem is easy to understand, it becomes increasingly complex as the number of cities increases and computation time explodes.
The team led by Jens Eisert and his colleague Jean-Pierre Seifert has now used purely analytical methods to evaluate how a quantum computer with qubits could solve this class of problems. A classic thought experiment with pen and paper and a lot of expertise.
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