Finding Stable Models via Quantum Computation

Quantum computers have the potential to out-perform classical computers—certain quantum algorithms run much faster than any known alternative classical algorithm. For example, Grover showed that a quantum computer can search an unordered list of N items in time O ( √ N), providing a quadratic speed-up over the classical algorithm. In this paper, we show that we can modify Grover’s search algorithm to give an algorithm that finds stable models of an Answer Set Program with a similar quadratic improvement over the classical algorithm. Marek and Remmel showed that Answer Set Programming (ASP) programs can uniformly solve all NP-search problems, so our quantum algorithm to find stable models of ASP programs also solves all NP-search problems. It follows that Answer Set Programming could provide a programming language for quantum computation