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Solving the Hamiltonian path problem with a light-based computer

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Abstract

In this paper we propose a special computational 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 by 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.

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Acknowledgments

The author likes to thanks to the anonymous reviewers and to the participants to Unconventional Computing 2006 conference (specially to Mikhail Prokopenko, Damien Woods, Jerzy Górecki, Alexis De Vos, Russ Abbott, William Langdon, Pierluigi Frisco) for providing useful suggestions on an earlier version of this paper (Oltean 2006).

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  1. Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, Babeş-Bolyai University, Kogălniceanu 1, Cluj-Napoca, 400084, Romania

    Mihai Oltean

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  1. Mihai Oltean
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Correspondence to Mihai Oltean.

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Oltean, M. Solving the Hamiltonian path problem with a light-based computer. Nat Comput 7, 57–70 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11047-007-9042-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11047-007-9042-z

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