In this paper we show that every combinatorial problem has an exact explicit equation that returns its solution. We present a method to obtain an equation that solves exactly any combinatorial problem, both inversion, constraint satisfaction and optimization, by obtaining its equivalent tensor network. This formulation only requires a basic knowledge of classical logical operators, at a first year level of any computer science degree. These equations are not necessarily computable in a reasonable time, nor do they allow to surpass the state of the art in computational complexity, but they allow to have a new perspective for the mathematical analysis of these problems. These equations computation can be approximated by different methods such as Matrix Product State compression. We also present the equations for numerous combinatorial problems. This work proves that, if there is a physical system capable of contracting in polynomial time the tensor networks presented, every NP-Hard problem can be solved in polynomial time.
In this paper we show that every combinatorial problem has an exact explicit equation that returns its solution. We present a method to obtain an equation that solves exactly any combinatorial problem, both inversion, constraint satisfaction and optimization, by obtaining its equivalent tensor network. This formulation only requires a basic knowledge of classical logical operators, at a first year level of any computer science degree. These equations are not necessarily computable in a reasonable time, nor do they allow to surpass the state of the art in computational complexity, but they allow to have a new perspective for the mathematical analysis of these problems. These equations computation can be approximated by different methods such as Matrix Product State compression. We also present the equations for numerous combinatorial problems. This work proves that, if there is a physical system capable of contracting in polynomial time the tensor networks presented, every NP-Hard problem can be solved in polynomial time.
We construct a tensor network that delivers an unnormalized quantum state whose coefficients are the solutions to a given instance of 3SAT, an NP-complete problem. The tensor network contraction that corresponds to the norm of the state counts the number of solutions to the instance. It follows that exact contractions of this tensor network are in the #P-complete computational complexity class, thus believed to be a hard task. Furthermore, we show that for a 3SAT instance with n bits, it is enough to perform a polynomial number of contractions of the tensor network structure associated to the computation of local observables to obtain one of the explicit solutions to the problem, if any. Physical realization of a state described by a generic tensor network is equivalent to finding the satisfying assignment of a 3SAT instance and, consequently, this experimental task is expected to be hard.
Quantum computers are expected to enable fast solving of large-scale combinatorial optimization problems. However, their limitations in fidelity and the number of qubits prevent them from handling real-world problems. Recently, a quantum-inspired solver using tensor networks has been proposed, which works on classical computers. Particularly, tensor networks have been applied to constrained combinatorial optimization problems for practical applications. By preparing a specific tensor network to sample states that satisfy constraints, feasible solutions can be searched for without the method of penalty functions. Previous studies have been based on profound physics, such as U(1) gauge schemes and high-dimensional lattice models. In this study, we devise to design feasible tensor networks using elementary mathematics without such a specific knowledge. One approach is to construct tensor networks with nilpotent-matrix manipulation. The second is to algebraically determine tensor parameters. We showed mathematically that such feasible tensor networks can be constructed to accommodate various types of constraints. For the principle verification, we numerically constructed a feasible tensor network for facility location problem, to find much faster construction than conventional methods. Then, by performing imaginary time evolution, feasible solutions were always obtained, ultimately leading to the optimal solution.
We construct a tensor network that delivers an unnormalized quantum state whose coefficients are the solutions to a given instance of 3SAT, an NP-complete problem. The tensor network contraction that corresponds to the norm of the state counts the number of solutions to the instance. It follows that exact contractions of this tensor network are in the #P-complete computational complexity class, thus believed to be a hard task. Furthermore, we show that for a 3SAT instance with n bits, it is enough to perform a polynomial number of contractions of the tensor network structure associated to the computation of local observables to obtain one of the explicit solutions to the problem, if any. Physical realization of a state described by a generic tensor network is equivalent to finding the satisfying assignment of a 3SAT instance and, consequently, this experimental task is expected to be hard.
This work presents a novel tensor network algorithm for solving Quadratic Unconstrained Binary Optimization (QUBO) problems, Quadratic Unconstrained Discrete Optimization (QUDO) problems, and Tensor Quadratic Unconstrained Discrete Optimization (T-QUDO) problems. The proposed algorithm is based on the MeLoCoToN methodology, which solves combinatorial optimization problems by employing superposition, imaginary time evolution, and projective measurements. Additionally, two different approaches are presented to solve QUBO and QUDO problems with k-neighbors interactions in a lineal chain, one based on 4-order tensor contraction and the other based on matrix-vector multiplication, including sparse computation and a new technique called "Waterfall". Furthermore, the performance of both implementations is compared with a quadratic optimization solver to demonstrate the performance of the method, showing advantages in several problem instances.
We construct a tensor network that delivers an unnormalized quantum state whose coefficients are the solutions to a given instance of 3SAT, an NP-complete problem. The tensor network contraction that corresponds to the norm of the state counts the number of solutions to the instance. It follows that exact contractions of this tensor network are in the \#P-complete computational complexity class, thus believed to be a hard task. Furthermore, we show that for a 3SAT instance with n bits, it is enough to perform a polynomial number of contractions of the tensor network structure associated to the computation of local observables to obtain one of the explicit solutions to the problem, if any. Physical realization of a state described by a generic tensor network is equivalent to finding the satisfying assignment of a 3SAT instance and, consequently, this experimental task is expected to be hard.
Characterizing the ground-state properties of disordered systems, such as spin glasses and combinatorial optimization problems, is fundamental to science and engineering. However, computing exact ground states and counting their degeneracies are generally NP-hard and #P-hard problems, respectively, posing a formidable challenge for exact algorithms. Recently, Tensor Networks methods, which utilize high-dimensional linear algebra and achieve massive hardware parallelization, have emerged as a rapidly developing paradigm for efficiently solving these tasks. Despite their success, these methods are fundamentally constrained by the exponential growth of space complexity, which severely limits their scalability. To address this bottleneck, we introduce the Branch-and-Bound Tensor Network (BBTN) method, which seamlessly integrates the adaptive search framework of branch-and-bound with the efficient contraction of tropical tensor networks, significantly extending the reach of exact algorithms. We show that BBTN significantly surpasses existing state-of-the-art solvers, setting new benchmarks for exact computation. It pushes the boundaries of tractability to previously unreachable scales, enabling exact ground-state counting for ±J spin glasses up to 64×64 and solving Maximum Independent Set problems on King's subgraphs up to 100×100. For hard instances, BBTN dramatically reduces the computational cost of standard Tropical Tensor Networks, compressing years of runtime into minutes. Furthermore, it outperforms leading integer-programming solvers by over 30×, establishing a versatile and scalable framework for solving hard problems in statistical physics and combinatorial optimization.