Variational formulation of optimization techniques and quantization & Classical and quantum chaos in physical optimization

Hideo Mabuchi, Professor of Applied Physics

Patrick Hayden, Professor of Quantum Physics

Eva Silverstein, Wells Family Director of the Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics and Professor of Physics

Jose Blanchet, Professor of Management Science and Engineering

Summary: This program of research will study connections among physical and informational geometry and dynamics, optimization, and chaos, across classical and quantum regimes. Stronger complexity-theoretic foundations for understanding the performance of physics-inspired optimization methods will help elucidate the potential of quantum effects and design architectures capable of achieving enhanced performance in the presence of finite decoherence. Feedback will be studied as an experimentally implementable tool for selectively inducing chaos to improve optimization performance in high-dimensions, and for realizing coherent energy descent in quantum protocols.