Evidence of scaling advantage on an NP-Complete problem with enhanced quantum solvers

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Lu, Quanfeng, Wei, Shijie, Li, Keren, Gao, Pan, Yan, Bao, Zheng, Muxi, Zhang, Haoran, Zeng, Jinfeng, Long, Gui-Lu
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Lu, Quanfeng
Wei, Shijie
Li, Keren
Gao, Pan
Yan, Bao
Zheng, Muxi
Zhang, Haoran
Zeng, Jinfeng
Long, Gui-Lu
author_facet Lu, Quanfeng
Wei, Shijie
Li, Keren
Gao, Pan
Yan, Bao
Zheng, Muxi
Zhang, Haoran
Zeng, Jinfeng
Long, Gui-Lu
contents Achieving quantum advantage remains a key milestone in the noisy intermediate-scale quantum era. Without rigorous complexity proofs, scaling advantage-where quantum resource requirements grow more slowly than their classical counterparts-serves as the primary indicator. However, direct applications of quantum optimization algorithms to classically intractable problems have yet to demonstrate this advantage. To address this challenge, we develop enhanced quantum solvers for the NP-complete one-in-three Boolean satisfiability problem. We propose a restricting space reduction algorithm (RSRA) that achieves optimal search space dimensionality, thereby reducing both qubits and time complexity for various quantum solvers. Extensive numerical investigations on problem instances with up to 65 variables demonstrate that our enhanced quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA) and quantum adiabatic algorithm (QAA)-based solvers outperform state-of-the-art classical solvers, with the QAA-based solver providing a lower bound for our method while exhibiting scaling advantage. Furthermore, we experimentally implement our enhanced solvers on a superconducting quantum processor with 13 qubits, confirming the predicted performance improvements. Collectively, our results provide empirical evidence of quantum speedup for an NP-complete problem.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_08869
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Evidence of scaling advantage on an NP-Complete problem with enhanced quantum solvers
Lu, Quanfeng
Wei, Shijie
Li, Keren
Gao, Pan
Yan, Bao
Zheng, Muxi
Zhang, Haoran
Zeng, Jinfeng
Long, Gui-Lu
Quantum Physics
Achieving quantum advantage remains a key milestone in the noisy intermediate-scale quantum era. Without rigorous complexity proofs, scaling advantage-where quantum resource requirements grow more slowly than their classical counterparts-serves as the primary indicator. However, direct applications of quantum optimization algorithms to classically intractable problems have yet to demonstrate this advantage. To address this challenge, we develop enhanced quantum solvers for the NP-complete one-in-three Boolean satisfiability problem. We propose a restricting space reduction algorithm (RSRA) that achieves optimal search space dimensionality, thereby reducing both qubits and time complexity for various quantum solvers. Extensive numerical investigations on problem instances with up to 65 variables demonstrate that our enhanced quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA) and quantum adiabatic algorithm (QAA)-based solvers outperform state-of-the-art classical solvers, with the QAA-based solver providing a lower bound for our method while exhibiting scaling advantage. Furthermore, we experimentally implement our enhanced solvers on a superconducting quantum processor with 13 qubits, confirming the predicted performance improvements. Collectively, our results provide empirical evidence of quantum speedup for an NP-complete problem.
title Evidence of scaling advantage on an NP-Complete problem with enhanced quantum solvers
topic Quantum Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.08869