Quantum annealing
With rising concerns about climate change, it’s useful to think about the way temperature varies by geographic location. Figure 10.1 has a fictional map of temperatures in a particular region.
Figure 10.1 – A temperature map
Our goal is to find the coldest spot on this map. One strategy would be to start at an arbitrary point and work our way to points of ever-decreasing temperature. This is called a greedy method because the algorithm always moves in a direction that yields a better value.
The arrow in Figure 10.1 shows a possible path using the greedy approach. The arrow starts at the top of the map, moves downward until it hits the center of the northernmost region, and then stops. The arrow stops because, having reached this point, movement in any direction would raise the temperature. The algorithm has found a local extreme point without ever getting near the coldest spot on the map.
Annealing is a way of moving slowly toward and...
