QCobalt is QWorld’s intermediate level workshop series on on quantum annealing, focusing on modeling and solving combinatorial optimization problems, created in 2023.

Cobalt is a collection of Jupyter notebooks, and each notebook has many programming tasks to provide hands-on experiences. Besides theoretical background on how to design QUBO formulations for combinatorial optimization problems, Cobalt also introduces Ocean SDK framework of D-Wave. 

Gitlab repository for Cobalt: https://gitlab.com/qworld/qresearch/qintern2021/12_educational-material-development-for-quantum-annealing

The first pilot QCobalt workshop was held in June 2023.

The outline of a typical QCobalt

QCobalt starts with an introduction combinatorial optimization problems and continues with QUBO formulation, Ising model and Quantum Annealing on D-Wave. 

Prerequisite

Although no explicit prerequisite exists for Cobalt,  completion of Bronze material or a general knowledge about quantum computing is suggested together with some familiarity with mathematical notation and linear algebra.

Before the workshop

Download or clone the repo: https://gitlab.com/qworld/qresearch/qintern2021/12_educational-material-development-for-quantum-annealing

Each participant should do certain installations and then test her system by following the instruction in “Ocean_SDK_installation.ipynb”. It is not required that the participant is able to connect to D-Wave machines to follow the workshop.

During the workshop

  • Introduction to combinatorial optimization problems 
  • QUBO Formulation
  • Modelling problems using penalty method and Ising model 
  • Simulated Annealing and expressing problems using BQM
  • Quantum Annealing

The list of QCobalt

#QCousins/NetworkCountryCityDates#DiplomaNotes
3QTurkeyTurkey2024: Mar 30-31/Apr 6-7
2QWorld/NYUADUAEAbu Dhabi2024: Feb 29-Mar 7
1QTurkeyAllOnline2023:June 12,15,19Pilot workshop