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Physica Scripta

A quantum–classical approach to solve the graph coloring problem with minimum colors

Prem Shanker Dwivedi, Abhinav Kumar, Amit Biswas, Indu Dohare

Published Oct 9, 2026• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Abstract Graph coloring with minimum colors is a well-known NP-complete problem in computer science and mathematics, having diverse real-life applications such as scheduling, register allocation, and frequency assignment. However, a classical computer requires exponential time to solve the graph coloring problem with the minimum number of colors. Therefore, classical approaches become infeasible for solving this problem on large graphs. In contrast, quantum computing offers the potential for speedup on specific problems, although solutions are typically obtained with a certain probability of correctness. This work proposes a quantum–classical method for solving the graph coloring problem and finding the chromatic number of a graph with guaranteed correctness, and also reduces the time and qubit complexities. The proposed method is inspired by Randomized Grover’s search algorithm, and the classical binary search algorithm. Here, Randomized Grover’s search algorithm provides quadratic speedup and this algorithm is useful in real situations when the number of solutions is not known in advance in contrast to the Grover’s search algorithm. The binary search algorithm helps to achieve logarithmic speedup, which reduces overall complexity. The experimental results strongly validate our claims and demonstrate the superiority of the approach. Furthermore, a comprehensive mathematical analysis is carried out to examine its complexities, as well as to compare its computational efficiency with existing methods.

DOI
10.1088/1402-4896/aeb290

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Abstract Graph coloring with minimum colors is a well-known NP-complete problem in computer science and mathematics, having diverse real-life applications such as scheduling, register allocation, and frequency assignment. However, a classical computer requires exponential time to solve the graph coloring problem with the minimum number of colors. Therefore, classical approaches become infeasible for solving this problem on large graphs. In contrast, quantum computing offers the potential for speedup on specific problems, although solutions are typically obtained with a certain probability of correctness. This work proposes a quantum–classical method for solving the graph coloring problem and finding the chromatic number of a graph with guaranteed correctness, and also reduces the time and qubit complexities. The proposed method is inspired by Randomized Grover’s search algorithm, and the classical binary search algorithm. Here, Randomized Grover’s search algorithm provides quadratic speedup and this algorithm is useful in real situations when the number of solutions is not known in advance in contrast to the Grover’s search algorithm. The binary search algorithm helps to achieve logarithmic speedup, which reduces overall complexity. The experimental results strongly validate our claims and demonstrate the superiority of the approach. Furthermore, a comprehensive mathematical analysis is carried out to examine its complexities, as well as to compare its computational efficiency with existing methods.
Abstract Graph colouring with minimum colours is a well-known NP-complete problem in computer science and mathematics, having diverse real-life applications such as scheduling, register allocation, and frequency assignment. However, a classical computer requires exponential time to solve the graph colouring problem with the minimum number of colours. Therefore, classical approaches become infeasible for solving this problem on large graphs. In contrast, quantum computing offers the potential for exponential speed up on specific problems, although solutions are typically obtained with a certain probability of correctness. This work proposes a quantum-classical method for solving the graph colouring problem with guaranteed correctness. The proposed method is inspired by Grover’s quantum search algorithm, the Clifford circuit, and the classical binary search algorithm. Here, Grover’s algorithm helps to achieve a quadratic speed up, Clifford circuit helps to mitigate the errors, and binary search helps to find the chromatic number with guaranteed correctness in polynomial time. We also conducted several experiments to evaluate the proposed method's performance and correctness, and the experimental results corroborate our claims regarding the proposed method. Additionally, a mathematical analysis is performed to assess its time and qubit complexities, and to compare its efficiency with existing methods.
Graph coloring is a well-known NP-complete problem with applications in scheduling, register allocation, frequency assignment, and network optimization. Quantum computing offers the potential for polynomial or even super-polynomial speedups in certain problem instances, yet practical quantum graph coloring methods must carefully balance qubit resources, circuit depth, and constraint enforcement. We proposed a solver agnostic quantum framework for KKK-coloring. Along with a novel encoding and efficient constraint implementation for its exact coloring exploiting Grover search and almost optimal coloring by the Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm \emph{(QAOA)}, and \emph{Quantum Annealing}. Unlike using O(NK)O(NK)O(NK) qubits as in \emph{SOTA}, we reduced the qubit requirements to O(Nlog⁡2K)O(N \log_2 K)O(Nlog2​K), along with optimized comparator circuits enforcing adjacency constraints. Further symmetry-based graph reduction is incorporated as an optional preprocessing step to further reduce the instance size before quantum execution.
Abstract The fastest known classical algorithm deciding the k-colorability of n-vertex graph requires running time Ω(2n)\varOmega (2^n)Ω(2n) Ω ( 2 n ) for k≥5k\ge 5k≥5 k ≥ 5 . In this work, we present an exponential-space quantum algorithm computing the chromatic number with running time O(1.9140n)O(1.9140^n)O(1.9140n) O ( 1 . 9140 n ) using quantum random access memory (QRAM). Our approach is based on Ambainis et al’s quantum dynamic programming with applications of Grover’s search to branching algorithms. We also present a polynomial-space quantum algorithm not using QRAM for the graph 20-coloring problem with running time O(1.9575n)O(1.9575^n)O(1.9575n) O ( 1 . 9575 n ) . For the polynomial-space quantum algorithm, we essentially develop (4−ϵ)n(4-\epsilon )^n(4−ϵ)n ( 4 - ϵ ) n -time classical algorithms that can be improved quadratically by Grover’s search.
The fastest known classical algorithm deciding the kkk-colorability of nnn-vertex graph requires running time Ω(2n)Ω(2^n)Ω(2n) for k≥5k\ge 5k≥5. In this work, we present an exponential-space quantum algorithm computing the chromatic number with running time O(1.9140n)O(1.9140^n)O(1.9140n) using quantum random access memory (QRAM). Our approach is based on Ambainis et al's quantum dynamic programming with applications of Grover's search to branching algorithms. We also present a polynomial-space quantum algorithm not using QRAM for the graph 202020-coloring problem with running time O(1.9575n)O(1.9575^n)O(1.9575n). In the polynomial-space quantum algorithm, we essentially show (4−ε)n(4-ε)^n(4−ε)n-time classical algorithms that can be improved quadratically by Grover's search.
Quantum computing based Grover's algorithm performs unstructured search problems in unsorted data to structured data in validating bit string through graph coloring. The quantum Grover's algorithm and graph theory was looked at in graph coloring. In graph coloring algorithm can be leveraged to validate coloring assignments for graph with arbitrary structures. It's accuracy and efficiency has been achieved by the iteration of square root (N) By adapting Grover's search mechanism, we aim to optimize the process of finding valid coloring in a graph, which is a crucial NP-complete problem in classical computation. This algorithm determines shortest node to see if the gates can be colored rightly for detect validation bit string. To get a validated a significant advantage of the hybrid classical-quantum approach reduces time complexity and exhaustive search. Grover's algorithm reduces the number of iterations needed for a solution, providing a quantum advantage in efficiency.
The design of a good algorithm to solve NP-hard combinatorial approximation problems requires specific domain knowledge about the problems and often needs a trial-and-error problem solving approach. Graph coloring is one of the essential fields to provide an efficient solution for combinatorial applications such as flight scheduling, frequency allocation in networking, and register allocation. In particular, some optimization algorithms have been proposed to solve the multi-coloring graph problems but most of the cases a simple searching method would be the best approach to find an optimal solution for graph coloring problems. However, this naive approach can increase the computation cost exponentially as the graph size and the number of colors increase. To mitigate such intolerable overhead, we investigate the methods to take the advantages of quantum computing properties to find a solution for multi-coloring graph problems in polynomial time. We utilize the variational quantum eigensolver (VQE) technique and quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA) to find solutions for three combinatorial applications by both transferring each problem model to the corresponding Ising model and by using the calculated Hamiltonian matrices. Our results demonstrate that VQE and QAOA algorithms can find one of the best solutions for each application. Therefore, our modeling approach with hybrid quantum algorithms can be applicable for combinatorial problems in various fields to find an optimal solution in polynomial time.