A spatial-photonic Ising machine to solve the two-way number-partitioning problem

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a spatial-photonic Ising machine capable of solving large-scale number-partitioning problems efficiently, outperforming classical and quantum annealers, with reduced hardware costs and linear scalability.

Contribution

The paper introduces an improved spatial-photonic Ising machine that solves large number-partitioning problems more efficiently and cost-effectively than existing methods.

Findings

Successfully encoded number-partitioning on SPIM for over 16,000 spins.

Achieved solutions with linear time complexity relative to problem size.

Outperformed classical solver Gurobi and quantum annealer D-Wave 5000+.

Abstract

We evaluate the performance of different algorithms in minimizing the Hamiltonian of a spatial-photonic Ising machine (SPIM). We then encode the number-partitioning problem on the SPIM and adiabatically arrive at good solutions for the problem for over 16000 spins, with a time complexity that only scales linearly with problem size. Finally, we benchmark our machine performance against the classical solver, Gurobi, and also a D-Wave 5000+ quantum annealer. With just one spatial light modulator, and and adiabatic evolution scheme for the phase, our results surpass current state-of-the-art SPIMs. We reduce hardware costs, and can solve larger problems more efficiently.