@article{KochBernalNeiraChenetal.2025, author = {Koch, Thorsten and Bernal Neira, David E. and Chen, Ying and Cortiana, Giorgio and Egger, Daniel J. and Heese, Raoul and Hegade, Narendra N. and Gomez Cadavid, Alejandro and Huang, Rhea and Itoko, Toshinari and Kleinert, Thomas and Maciel Xavier, Pedro and Mohseni, Naeimeh and Montanez-Barrera, Jhon A. and Nakano, Koji and Nannicini, Giacomo and O'Meara, Corey and Pauckert, Justin and Proissl, Manuel and Ramesh, Anurag and Schicker, Maximilian and Shimada, Noriaki and Takeori, Mitsuharu and Valls, Victor and Van Bulck, David and Woerner, Stefan and Zoufal, Christa}, title = {Quantum Optimization Benchmark Library -- The Intractable Decathlon}, arxiv = {http://arxiv.org/abs/2504.03832}, year = {2025}, abstract = {Through recent progress in hardware development, quantum computers have advanced to the point where benchmarking of (heuristic) quantum algorithms at scale is within reach. Particularly in combinatorial optimization -- where most algorithms are heuristics -- it is key to empirically analyze their performance on hardware and track progress towards quantum advantage. To this extent, we present ten optimization problem classes that are difficult for existing classical algorithms and can (mostly) be linked to practically-relevant applications, with the goal to enable systematic, fair, and comparable benchmarks for quantum optimization methods. Further, we introduce the Quantum Optimization Benchmark Library (QOBLIB) where the problem instances and solution track records can be found. The individual properties of the problem classes vary in terms of objective and variable type, coefficient ranges, and density. Crucially, they all become challenging for established classical methods already at system sizes ranging from less than 100 to, at most, an order of 100,000 decision variables, allowing to approach them with today's quantum computers. We reference the results from state-of-the-art solvers for instances from all problem classes and demonstrate exemplary baseline results obtained with quantum solvers for selected problems. The baseline results illustrate a standardized form to present benchmarking solutions, which has been designed to ensure comparability of the used methods, reproducibility of the respective results, and trackability of algorithmic and hardware improvements over time. We encourage the optimization community to explore the performance of available classical or quantum algorithms and hardware platforms with the benchmarking problem instances presented in this work toward demonstrating quantum advantage in optimization.}, language = {en} } @article{BernalVigerskeTrespalaciosetal.2017, author = {Bernal, David E. and Vigerske, Stefan and Trespalacios, Francisco and Grossmann, Ignacio E.}, title = {Improving the performance of DICOPT in convex MINLP problems using a feasibility pump}, journal = {Optimization Methods and Software}, year = {2017}, abstract = {The solver DICOPT is based on an outer-approximation algorithm used for solving mixed- integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) problems. This algorithm is very effective for solving some types of convex MINLPs. However, there are certain problems that are diffcult to solve with this algorithm. One of these problems is when the nonlinear constraints are so restrictive that the nonlinear subproblems produced by the algorithm are infeasible. This problem is addressed in this paper with a feasibility pump algorithm, which modifies the objective function in order to efficiently find feasible solutions. It has been implemented as a preprocessing algorithm for DICOPT. Computational comparisons with previous versions of DICOPT and other MINLP solvers on a set of convex MINLPs demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm in terms of solution quality and solving time.}, language = {en} }