Comparison of symbolic and ordinary powers of ideals

In this paper we generalize the theorem of Ein-Lazarsfeld-Smith (concerning the behavior of symbolic powers of prime ideals in regular rings finitely generated over a field of characteristic 0) to arbitrary regular rings containing a field. The basic theorem states that in such rings, if P is a prime ideal of height c, then for all n, the symbolic (cn)th power of P is contained in the nth power of P. Results are also given in the non-regular case: one must correct by a power of the Jacobian ideal in rings where the Jacobian ideal is defined

Quantum Query Algorithms are Completely Bounded Forms

We prove a characterization of $t$-query quantum algorithms in terms of the unit ball of a space of degree-$2t$ polynomials. Based on this, we obtain a refined notion of approximate polynomial degree that equals the quantum query complexity, answering a question of Aaronson et al. (CCC'16). Our proof is based on a fundamental result of Christensen and Sinclair (J. Funct. Anal., 1987) that generalizes the well-known Stinespring representation for quantum channels to multilinear forms. Using our characterization, we show that many polynomials of degree four are far from those coming from two-query quantum algorithms. We also give a simple and short proof of one of the results of Aaronson et al. showing an equivalence between one-query quantum algorithms and bounded quadratic polynomials.Comment: 24 pages, 3 figures. v2: 27 pages, minor changes in response to referee comment