  Distance geometry problem belongs to a class of hard problems in classical
computation that can be understood in terms of a set of inputs processed
according to a given transformation, and for which the number of possible
outcomes grows exponentially with the number of inputs. It is conjectured that
quantum computing schemes can solve problems belonging to this class in a time
that grows only at a polynomial rate with the number of inputs. While quantum
computers are still being developed, there are some classical optics
computation approaches that can perform very well for specific tasks. Here, we
present an optical computing approach for the distance geometry problem in one
dimension and show that it is very promising in the classical computing regime.
