# Ising formulations of many NP problems

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1302.5843 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1302.5843/

## Key facts

- Cited by 207 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 23 Feb 2013.

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 207)

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- [Black-box optimization for integer-variable problems using Ising machines and factorization machines](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.01016/) (2022)
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- [Quantum Natural Language Processing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.19758/) (2024)
- [Message Passing Variational Autoregressive Network for Solving Intractable Ising Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.06225/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We provide Ising formulations for many NP-complete and NP-hard problems, including all of Karp's 21 NP-complete problems. This collects and extends mappings to the Ising model from partitioning, covering and satisfiability. In each case, the required number of spins is at most cubic in the size of the problem. This work may be useful in designing adiabatic quantum optimization algorithms.
