  Wong's diffusion network is a stochastic, zero-input Hopfield network with a
Gibbs stationary distribution over a bounded, connected continuum. Previously,
logarithmic thermal annealing was demonstrated for the diffusion network and
digital versions of it were studied and applied to imaging. Recently, "quantum"
annealed Markov chains have garnered significant attention because of their
improved performance over "pure" thermal annealing. In this note, a joint
quantum and thermal version of Wong's diffusion network is described and its
convergence properties are studied. Different choices for "auxiliary" functions
are discussed, including those of the kinetic type previously associated with
quantum annealing.

Neural and Evolutionary Computing