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ARPN Journal of Engineering and Applied Sciences

An innovative method to escape local minima using quantum system degeneracy in Simulated Annealing

Published Jan 25, 2025• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Simulated Annealing (SA) is often used to provide satisfactory solutions to solving combinatorial problems. However, the SA is limited by its tendency to get stuck in local minima, which often prevents the global optimal solution from being reached for large or very complex problems. To overcome this obstacle, we present a new method inspired by the properties of degenerate quantum systems, named Degenerate Quantum Simulated Annealing (SA-DQS). This innovative approach exploits the coexistence of several quantum states of the same energy; this multiplicity of states is advantageous because it allows to finding of several solutions with identical energies, thus increasing the chances of discovering and building a promising solution among them, and of getting out of the traps of local minima more efficiently. The traveling salesman problem (TSP) is used as an application benchmark to validate the effectiveness of SA-DQS. Compared to standard simulated annealing (SA-S), SA-DQS showed superior performance on multiple instances of TSP. On average, the solutions provided by SA-DQS are equal to or closer to the optimum known in TSPLIB, in addition, it also offers a shorter computation time compared to that of other heuristic methods.

DOI
10.59018/122481

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•Jun 18, 2007•23 citations
Simulated Annealing (SA) is often used to provide satisfactory solutions to solving combinatorial problems. However, the SA is limited by its tendency to get stuck in local minima, which often prevents the global optimal solution from being reached for large or very complex problems. To overcome this obstacle, we present a new method inspired by the properties of degenerate quantum systems, named Degenerate Quantum Simulated Annealing (SA-DQS). This innovative approach exploits the coexistence of several quantum states of the same energy; this multiplicity of states is advantageous because it allows to finding of several solutions with identical energies, thus increasing the chances of discovering and building a promising solution among them, and of getting out of the traps of local minima more efficiently. The traveling salesman problem (TSP) is used as an application benchmark to validate the effectiveness of SA-DQS. Compared to standard simulated annealing (SA-S), SA-DQS showed superior performance on multiple instances of TSP. On average, the solutions provided by SA-DQS are equal to or closer to the optimum known in TSPLIB, in addition, it also offers a shorter computation time compared to that of other heuristic methods.
We are interested in Quantum Annealing (QA), an algorithm inspired by quantum theory and Simulated Annealing (SA). It is based on quantum replicas, which explore an energy surface, and are less prone to be trapped in local minima. Moreover, kinetic energy helps replicas to find a global minimum. This method has proved its efficiency for several optimization problems. We start this study by presenting the application of QA to a new problem: the Multidimensional Knapsack Problem (MKP). We then present a new idea to speed up the quantum annealing process by detecting the resemblance between replicas. If many of the replicas exhibit the same properties, our assumption is that these properties will also be present with a high probability in a global solution. Consequently, the QA may restrict certain mutations in order to preserve those similarities. We call this algorithm Restrictive Quantum Annealing (RQA). We establish that RQA has better performances than QA and SA by carrying out an adequate analysis of the RQA performance, taking the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) and the above-mentioned MKP as references. We also advance guidelines indicating types of NP-hard problems for which our algorithm is particularly well adapted.
This paper implements a new way of solving a problem called the traveling salesman problem (TSP) using quantum genetic algorithm (QGA). We compared how well this new approach works to the traditional method known as a classical genetic algorithm (CGA). The TSP is a well-established challenge in combinatorial optimization where the objective is to find the most efficient path to visit a series of cities, minimizing the total distance, and returning to the starting point. We chose the TSP to test the performance of both algorithms because of its computational complexity and importance in practical applications. We choose the dataset from the international standard library TSPLIB for our experiments. By designing and implementing both algorithms and conducting experiments on various sizes and types of TSP instances, we provide an in-depth analysis of the accuracy of the optimal solution, the number of iterations, the execution time, and the stability of the algorithms for both. The empirical findings indicate that the CGA outperforms the QGA in terms of finding superior solutions more quickly in most of the test instances, especially when the problem size is large. This suggests that although the principle of quantum computing provides a new way to solve complex combinatorial optimisation problems, the implementation of quantum phenomena and the setting of parameters such as the optimal angle for a quantum revolving gate is challenging and need further optimisation to achieve the desired results. Additionally, it is important to note that the QGA has not been tested on real quantum hardware, so its true performance remains unverified. These limitations provide rich opportunities for further research in the future.
Quantum computing has emerged as a promising computational paradigm with the potential to solve problems that are intractable for classical computers. This paper provides an overview of the current state of quantum computing, including its historical development, hardware advancements, applications, and challenges. Special attention is given to combinatorial optimization, which is considered one of the most promising application domains. The limitations of current quantum systems and future research directions are also discussed. This paper presents a comparative study between a conventional D-Wave-based simulated annealing approach and a proposed hybrid optimization model for solving largescale combinatorial optimization problems. The study focuses on benchmark problems, including AES, TSP gr24, and a real-world load balancing problem, all formulated as QUBO models. The D-Wave approach employs the dwave-neal simulated annealing engine with various parameter settings, while the proposed model introduces a decomposition-based framework combined with adaptive parameter control and iterative refinement. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed model consistently outperforms the conventional approach in terms of solution quality, achieving significantly lower energy values across all problem instances. In particular, for the TSP gr24 problem, the proposed model achieves near-optimal solutions with substantially reduced computation time. For large-scale problems such as AES and load balancing, the proposed model maintains scalability and robustness, whereas the conventional approach suffers from increased computational cost and performance degradation. Although the proposed method introduces additional computational steps, its hybrid structure effectively mitigates limitations related to local minima, parameter sensitivity, and scalability. These findings indicate that integrating classical optimization techniques with quantum-inspired methods is essential for practical applications. The proposed model provides a promising framework for solving complex real-world optimization problems and highlights the importance of hybrid approaches in advancing quantum annealing technologies.
With progress in quantum technology more sophisticated quantum annealing devices are becoming available. While they offer new possibilities for solving optimization problems, their true potential is still an open question. As the optimal design of adiabatic algorithms plays an important role in their assessment, we illustrate the aspects and challenges to consider when implementing optimization problems on quantum annealing hardware based on the example of the traveling salesman problem (TSP). We demonstrate that tunneling between local minima can be exponentially suppressed if the quantum dynamics are not carefully tailored to the problem. Furthermore we show that inequality constraints, in particular, present a major hurdle for the implementation on analog quantum annealers. We finally argue that programmable digital quantum annealers can overcome many of these obstacles and can - once large enough quantum computers exist - provide an interesting route to using quantum annealing on a large class of problems.
Quantum computing has paved a new way for faster and more efficient solutions to large-scale, real-world optimization problems that are challenging for classical computing systems. For instance, selective traveling salesman problem (sTSP) that is famous in such fields as logistic optimization and has attracted increasing attention from the research community, however, is known as an NP-Hard problem. Solving the sTSP is, therefore, extremely complex because the optimization function potentially comes with an exponential number of variables that cannot be solved in polynomial time in general. To this end, we propose a quantum annealing framework for time-bounded and near-optimal solutions for the sTSP, overcoming hardware limits of near-term quantum devices. In particular, we put forth an efficient Hamiltonian (QUBO) to encode the complex decision-making for the sTSP on noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) annealer. Furthermore, experimental results we obtained on the D-Wave 2000QQQquantum hardware demonstrate that the optimal solutions for several instances can be attained.
Abstract Quantum Monte Carlo has found a new application far afield from the solution of the Schrodinger equation for many-body problems. In this paper the authors report a method for solving multidimensional optimization problems that is superior, in many cases, to other methods such as conjugate gradient methods, the simplex method, direction-set methods, genetic methods, and classical simulated annealing. The new approach, aptly titled “quantum annealing,” is closely related to classical annealing, in which a physical system such as a metal cluster is slowly cooled and finds its lowest-energy configuration as the temperature drops to zero. In classical annealing the system follows classical-mechanical dynamics as the temperature drops. In quantum annealing a collection of configurations evolves in the the same way as walkers undergoing diffusion and multiplication in diffusion QMC with the added feature of a slowly dropping value for Planck’s constant h. Classical annealing allows the escape from local minima with the aid of thermal fluctuations. Quantum annealing allows such escape by delocalization and tunneling. Since a QMC walker can multiply in number on entering a low-energy region, a single walker can populate an entire region.