Abstract: The genetic algorithm is an efficient optimization tool for its independence of problems, intrinsic parallelism and inherent learning capacity; however, it has some disadvantages such as slow convergence and prematurity. In this paper, a novel algorithm, called the quantum genetic alrogithm--QGA, is proposed based on the combination of the quantum theory with the evolutionary theory. By adopting the qubit chromosome as a representation, QGA can represent a linear superposition of solutions due to its probabilistic representation. The random observation simulating the quantum collapse can bring diverse individuals, and the evolution of quantum chromosome can also pilot the evolution. So it has better diversity than the classical genetic algorithm. Rapid convergence and good global search capacity characterize the performance of QGA. The paper not only proves the global convergence of the QGA, but also some simulation experiments are shown to prove its superiority over other algorithms.

Key words: quantum genetic algorithms, quantum chromosome, evolution, convergence