Quantum-inspired evolutionary algorithms
Sulabh Bansal, Amrit Kaur · 2025
Quantum-Inspired Evolutionary Algorithms (QIEAs) represent a novel fusion of quantum computing principles and classical evolutionary strategies, offering a powerful approach to solving complex optimization problems. This chapter provides a comprehensive overview, detailing foundational concepts, implementation techniques, and potential applications of QIEAs. By leveraging quantum phenomena such as superposition and entanglement, QIEAs enhance the exploitation and exploration capabilities of traditional evolutionary algorithms (EAs), thus enabling an efficient search of vast solution spaces. The study examines key components of QIEA, including quantum encoding, rotation gates, and entanglement operations, and compares its performance with classical EAs. By analyzing real-life examples of combinatorial optimization problems (COPs) such as the minimum spanning tree (MST), traveling salesman problem (TSP), and graph coloring, the chapter demonstrates QIEA’s superior efficiency and solution quality. Despite implementation challenges, QIEA shows promise in various domains, including machine learning, finance, healthcare, telecommunications, and e-commerce. Future research directions are outlined, emphasizing the need for simplified quantum-inspired operators, hybrid quantum-classical systems, and interdisciplinary collaboration. This chapter highlights the transformative potential of QIEA, setting the stage for further advancements and applications in optimization and computational efficiency.