Solving k–SAT problems with generalized quantum measurement

Abstract We generalize the projection–based quantum measurement–driven k –SAT algorithm of Benjamin, Zhao, and Fitzsimons 1 to arbitrary strength quantum measurements, including the limit of continuous monitoring. In doing so, we clarify that this algorithm is a particular case of the measurement–driven quantum control strategy elsewhere referred to as “Zeno dragging”. We argue that the algorithm is most efficient with finite time and measurement resources in the continuum limit, where measurements have an infinitesimal strength and duration. Moreover, for solvable k -SAT problems, the dynamics generated by the algorithm converge deterministically towards target dynamics in the long–time (Zeno) limit, implying that the algorithm can successfully operate autonomously via Lindblad dissipation, without detection. We subsequently study both the conditional and unconditional dynamics of the algorithm implemented via generalized measurements, quantifying the advantages of detection for heralding errors. These strategies are investigated first in a computationally–trivial 2-qubit 2-SAT problem to build intuition, and then we consider the scaling of the algorithm on 3-SAT problems encoded with 4–10 qubits. We numerically investigate the scaling of 3-SAT with respect to algorithmic runtime and find that the optimized time to solution scales with qubit number n as λ n , where λ is slightly larger than $$\sqrt{2}$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msqrt> <mml:mrow> <mml:mn>2</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:msqrt> </mml:math> for unconditional dynamics and less than $$\sqrt{2}$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msqrt> <mml:mrow> <mml:mn>2</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:msqrt> </mml:math> for conditional dynamics. We assess the implications for using this analog measurement–driven approach to quantum computing in practice.