Combinatorial optimisation is a very common problem in economics. We can think, for example, of problems such as finding the shortest route through certain cities or maximising efficiency in the production process by optimally planning the set of processes involved. Often, finding the best choice among a large number of possible combinations is not an easy task for traditional computing. Quantum computing, however, offers new tools with the potential to offer better performance in solving these problems. Among the quantum technologies used for combinatorial optimisation, adiabatic quantum computation, and in particular quantum annealing, is undoubtedly the most successful approach to date. If you want to know more about this technology and its implications in this kind of problems, you can read our white paper.
