Computing NP-complete problems in polynomial time by means of Physics

Can NP-complete problems be solved efficiently in the physical universe? Some researchers have claimed to be able to solve NP-complete problems in polynomial time by encoding the problem in the state of a physical system and letting it evolve naturally, according to the laws of physics. However, their proposals have not proven to be very effective in practice. Additionally, there are several reasons to believe that those methods would not work if P 6= NP. We present some physical assumptions (both from classical physics and quantum mechanics) that would allow us to provably solve NP-complete problems in polynomial time by means of Physics, even if P 6= NP and NP 6⊂ BQP. We also study if our proposals are consistent with currently known laws of Physics