Quantum Approaches to the Minimum Edge Multiway Cut Problem

We investigate the minimum edge multiway cut problem, a fundamental task in evaluating the resilience of telecommunication networks. This study benchmarks the problem across three quantum computing paradigms: quantum annealing on a D-Wave quantum processing unit, photonic variational quantum circuits simulated on Quandela’s Perceval platform, and IBM’s gate-based Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA). We assess the comparative feasibility of these approaches for early-stage quantum optimization, highlighting trade-offs in circuit constraints, encoding overhead, and scalability. Our findings suggest that quantum annealing currently offers the most scalable performance for this class of problems, while photonic and gate-based approaches remain limited by hardware and simulation depth. These results provide actionable insights for designing quantum workflows targeting combinatorial optimization in telecom security and resilience analysis.