Experimental verification of NP-complete problems via linear optics
Jian Li, Tongjun Liu, Tianlei Hou, Xiaorun Wang, Chenxi Liu, Pan Dai, Qin Wang · 2021 13th International Conference on Wireless Communications and Signal Processing (WCSP) · 2021
Non-deterministic polynomial (NP)-complete problems are collections of intractable problems for classical computers, but they may be easier to solve for quantum computers. Considering that practical quantum computers and networks are still under development, it is necessary to find alternatives to solve these problems. Simulations with linear optics offer a good choice since much of the research on quantum information is executed with this approach. In this work, based on Aaronson's protocol (Theory Comput, 5, 1, 2009) ad Arrazola et. al.'s linear optics scheme (npj Quantum Inf, 78, 022310, 2018), we present a demonstration of the NP-complete 2-out-of-4 SAT problem for 4 variables. The experimental results show that NP-complete problems can be well simulated through linear optical systems.