State
Assignment, with the objective value it achieves
A bit string read off the computational basis — a value for every one of the problem's decision variables — together with the value of the objective at that string. One process arrives here; nothing in this graph consumes it yet.
A state is an object you can be holding, named once so that two routes reaching the same thing are drawn as reaching the same thing. It says nothing about how you got here or where you can go next — that is entirely in the processes below.
This is a kind of
This state is not recorded as a kind of anything else. It stands on its own in the vocabulary.
Narrower kinds of this
No state in the vocabulary is recorded as a narrower kind of this one.
Records that are this object
Nothing in the catalogue has been joined to this state. That is a gap in the join rather than a claim that no such object exists; the shelf on /repository lists what is joined and what is not, with the reason.
Work that arrives here
- Search a cost Hamiltonian for the assignment it minimises
A cost function over discrete assignments, rewritten as an operator diagonal in the computational basis, is searched for the assignment at or near its minimum — by alternating short unitaries at a fixed, chosen depth, or by interpolating continuously toward the operator's own ground state. Both routes read the same operator; what they promise about the assignment they hand back is where they differ.
Work that starts here
No recorded process takes this as its input. Nothing in this graph leaves from here.