Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Hindy, Yousef
• Pointing, Jessica
• Tolunay, Meltem
• Venkatarao, Sreeram
• Motta, Mario
• Latone, Joseph A.

Titel

Application of the Variational Quantum Eigensolver to the Ultimate Pit Problem

Ist Teil von

• 2023 IEEE International Conference on Quantum Computing and Engineering (QCE), 2023, Vol.1, p.681-691

Ort / Verlag

IEEE

Erscheinungsjahr

2023

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

IEEE

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Determining the ultimate pit profile that maximizes the profit while minimizing the cost of mine extraction is a fundamental problem in open-pit mining. The development of quantum computing hardware and advances in heuristic quantum algorithms make it possible to explore quantum computing as a solution for the ultimate pit problem. Here, we cast the ultimate pit problem as a Hamiltonian ground-state search problem, which we approximately solve using the variational quantum eigensolver algorithm. Moreover, we use a domain decomposition approach to extend the reach of today's small-scale quantum hardware. We demonstrate the procedure on IBMQ devices using four qubits. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to use heuristic quantum algorithms to map small-scale instances of the ultimate pit problem on quantum hardware.