Adaptive Computation of the Swap-Insert Correction Distance

The Swap-Insert Correction distance from a string $S$ of length $n$ to another string $L$ of length $m\geq n$ on the alphabet $[1..d]$ is the minimum number of insertions, and swaps of pairs of adjacent symbols, converting $S$ into $L$. Contrarily to other correction distances, computing it is NP-Hard in the size $d$ of the alphabet. We describe an algorithm computing this distance in time within $O(d^2 nm g^{d-1})$, where there are $n_\alpha$ occurrences of $\alpha$ in $S$, $m_\alpha$ occurrences of $\alpha$ in $L$, and where $g=\max_{\alpha\in[1..d]} \min\{n_\alpha,m_\alpha-n_\alpha\}$ measures the difficulty of the instance. The difficulty $g$ is bounded by above by various terms, such as the length of the shortest string $S$, and by the maximum number of occurrences of a single character in $S$. Those results illustrate how, in many cases, the correction distance between two strings can be easier to compute than in the worst case scenario.Comment: 16 pages, no figures, long version of the extended abstract accepted to SPIRE 201

An Algorithmic Argument for Nonadaptive Query Complexity Lower Bounds on Advised Quantum Computation

This paper employs a powerful argument, called an algorithmic argument, to prove lower bounds of the quantum query complexity of a multiple-block ordered search problem in which, given a block number i, we are to find a location of a target keyword in an ordered list of the i-th block. Apart from much studied polynomial and adversary methods for quantum query complexity lower bounds, our argument shows that the multiple-block ordered search needs a large number of nonadaptive oracle queries on a black-box model of quantum computation that is also supplemented with advice. Our argument is also applied to the notions of computational complexity theory: quantum truth-table reducibility and quantum truth-table autoreducibility.Comment: 16 pages. An extended abstract will appear in the Proceedings of the 29th International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer-Verlag, Prague, August 22-27, 200

Oracle Complexity Classes and Local Measurements on Physical Hamiltonians

The canonical problem for the class Quantum Merlin-Arthur (QMA) is that of estimating ground state energies of local Hamiltonians. Perhaps surprisingly, [Ambainis, CCC 2014] showed that the related, but arguably more natural, problem of simulating local measurements on ground states of local Hamiltonians (APX-SIM) is likely harder than QMA. Indeed, [Ambainis, CCC 2014] showed that APX-SIM is P^QMA[log]-complete, for P^QMA[log] the class of languages decidable by a P machine making a logarithmic number of adaptive queries to a QMA oracle. In this work, we show that APX-SIM is P^QMA[log]-complete even when restricted to more physical Hamiltonians, obtaining as intermediate steps a variety of related complexity-theoretic results. We first give a sequence of results which together yield P^QMA[log]-hardness for APX-SIM on well-motivated Hamiltonians: (1) We show that for NP, StoqMA, and QMA oracles, a logarithmic number of adaptive queries is equivalent to polynomially many parallel queries. These equalities simplify the proofs of our subsequent results. (2) Next, we show that the hardness of APX-SIM is preserved under Hamiltonian simulations (a la [Cubitt, Montanaro, Piddock, 2017]). As a byproduct, we obtain a full complexity classification of APX-SIM, showing it is complete for P, P^||NP, P^||StoqMA, or P^||QMA depending on the Hamiltonians employed. (3) Leveraging the above, we show that APX-SIM is P^QMA[log]-complete for any family of Hamiltonians which can efficiently simulate spatially sparse Hamiltonians, including physically motivated models such as the 2D Heisenberg model. Our second focus considers 1D systems: We show that APX-SIM remains P^QMA[log]-complete even for local Hamiltonians on a 1D line of 8-dimensional qudits. This uses a number of ideas from above, along with replacing the "query Hamiltonian" of [Ambainis, CCC 2014] with a new "sifter" construction.Comment: 38 pages, 3 figure

Succinct progress measures for solving parity games

The recent breakthrough paper by Calude et al. has given the first algorithm for solving parity games in quasi-polynomial time, where previously the best algorithms were mildly subexponential. We devise an alternative quasi-polynomial time algorithm based on progress measures, which allows us to reduce the space required from quasi-polynomial to nearly linear. Our key technical tools are a novel concept of ordered tree coding, and a succinct tree coding result that we prove using bounded adaptive multi-counters, both of which are interesting in their own right