Applying evolutionary techniques to quantum computing problems

A new approach based on Evolution Strategies (ES) is proposed to evolve quantum unitary operators which represent the computational algorithm a quantum computer would perform to solve an arbitrary problem. This approach has superior attributes over previous endeavors by using real valued vectors and not limited to a predefined set of quantum gates. We show this method can be used to solve a variety of key problems from evolving simple quantum gates, quantum oracles, to generalized problem instances. This method is highly extensible and useful for propagating future research of quantum unitary operator development.