Empirical Investigation of Quantum Computing on Solving Complex Problems

Context: The rules of Quantum Mechanics have been exploited through Quantum Computing (QC) to solve specific problems and process information in expeditious ways as compared to Conventional Computing (CC) such as factoring integers. Problem: With the alluring computation capability of QC, it is still important to assess the implications and limitations of QC in solving a variety of computationally demanding problems. Method: In this regard, an empirical study was conducted to assess the efficacy of QC in terms of solving certain complex problems by keeping a tradeoff between the execution time and problem size. An analysis was performed based on the widely used Shor’s algorithms and the efficacy of QC as compared to CC was reported. Results: The outcomes show that QC has the potential to exponentially speed up the identification of a solution to certain polynomial problems that are intractable for CC. However, further research is needed to fully understand the potential and limitations of QC for Non-Polynomial (NP) complete problems.