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MathsIsFun

Administrator

Registered: 2005-01-21

Posts: 7,713

Optical Solution to the Traveling Salesman Problem

Not a mathematical solution as such, but may be of interest: http://www.opticsexpress.org/abstract.cfm?id=140598

For a quick-and-dirty intro to NP complete, I wrote this: NP-Complete - A Rough Guide

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"The physicists defer only to mathematicians, and the mathematicians defer only to God ..."  - Leon M. Lederman

laorici

Member

Registered: 2007-08-12

Posts: 1

Re: Optical Solution to the Traveling Salesman Problem

This idea is not so new. It has been arround since 2006.

See here:

http://www.cs.ubbcluj.ro/~moltean/optical

I cite from their 2006 paper:

"In this paper we suggest the use of light for performing useful computations. Namely, we propose a special device which uses light rays for solving the Hamiltonian path problem on a directed graph. The device has a graph-like representation and the light is traversing it following the routes given by the connections between nodes. In each node the rays are uniquely marked so that they can be easily identified. At the destination node we will search only for particular rays that have passed only once through each node. We show that the proposed device can solve small and medium instances of the problem in reasonable time."

MathsIsFun

Administrator

Registered: 2005-01-21

Posts: 7,713

Re: Optical Solution to the Traveling Salesman Problem

Thank you, laorici.

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"The physicists defer only to mathematicians, and the mathematicians defer only to God ..."  - Leon M. Lederman

MathsIsFun

Administrator

Registered: 2005-01-21

Posts: 7,713

Re: Optical Solution to the Traveling Salesman Problem

Thank you, laorici. Maybe even before that, since optical computing has been thought about for a long time.

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"The physicists defer only to mathematicians, and the mathematicians defer only to God ..."  - Leon M. Lederman

laorici

Member

Registered: 2007-08-12

Posts: 1

Re: Optical Solution to the Traveling Salesman Problem

Scot Aarson says that this is the perpetuum mobile of the digital age ...