Navigating a maze using a quantum annealer

Abstract

Quantum annealers exploit quantum effects in an attempt to minimize a classical Hamiltonian function with a higher likelihood of reaching optimality than can be expected from simulated annealing. The key programming challenge is how to express algorithms in terms of the specific Hamiltonian supported by the quantumannealing hardware. In this paper, we present an algorithm for finding the shortest path through a maze not via a traditional backtracking mechanism but rather by expressing the shortest path as the globally optimal value of a Hamiltonian.