In a recent paper (Gislén et al. 1989) a convenient encoding and an efficient mean field algorithm for solving scheduling problems using a Potts neural network was developed and numerically explored on simplified and synthetic problems. In this work the approach is extended to realistic applications both with respect to problem complexity and size. This extension requires among other things the interaction of Potts neurons with different number of components. We analyze the corresponding linearized mean field equations with respect to estimating the phase transition temperature. Also a brief comparison with the linear programming approach is given. Testbeds consisting of generated problems within the Swedish high school system are solved efficiently with high quality solutions as results.

Rotor neurons are introduced to encode states living on the surface of a sphere in D dimensions. Such rotors can be regarded as continuous generalizations of binary (Ising) neurons. The corresponding mean field equations are derived, and phase transition properties based on linearized dynamics are given. The power of this approach is illustrated with an optimization problem—placing N identical charges on a sphere such that the overall repulsive energy is minimized. The rotor approach appears superior to other methods for this problem both with respect to solution quality and computational effort needed.