How quantum PageRank physicists thought

And I always said that there is a connection between the theory of algorithms and physics. Here, the first confirmation from the professionals. A group of scientists proposed to look at PageRank as a wave function in the potential, which is determined by the difference of incoming and outgoing links to the page. Given this, and applying simple algebraic magic over the original formula for PageRank, mathematicians come to an equation like the Schrödinger equation, whose solution is the function PageRank. To humanity this, besides the awareness of the amazing interrelationships in nature, also makes it possible to calculate PageRank (not exactly, it seems, but only approximately) three times faster than the existing iterative method.

The article is available here: arxiv.org/abs/0807.4325