Claim record · edition 0.1.0

tn-007Established result

Quadratic unconstrained binary optimization problems map exactly onto Ising spin models, and explicit Ising formulations exist for a catalogue of NP-hard problems.

The substitution between binary variables and ±1 spins is exact and invertible, and published formulations give the couplings, fields, and penalty structures for a range of NP-hard families.

Limits of this claim

An exact encoding does not make a problem easy. Penalty multipliers widen the energy scale and worsen conditioning, and the hardness of the original problem survives the change of variables intact.

Supporting sources

primary paper · identifier verified

Ising formulations of many NP problems

Andrew Lucas · 2013

arXiv:1302.5843

Catalogues explicit Ising encodings for NP-hard problems — the step that turns a combinatorial problem into a spin model a tensor network can act on.

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