490 research outputs found

    Characterization of Binary Constraint System Games

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    We consider a class of nonlocal games that are related to binary constraint systems (BCSs) in a manner similar to the games implicit in the work of Mermin [N.D. Mermin, "Simple unified form for the major no-hidden-variables theorems," Phys. Rev. Lett., 65(27):3373-3376, 1990], but generalized to n binary variables and m constraints. We show that, whenever there is a perfect entangled protocol for such a game, there exists a set of binary observables with commutations and products similar to those exhibited by Mermin. We also show how to derive upper bounds strictly below 1 for the the maximum entangled success probability of some BCS games. These results are partial progress towards a larger project to determine the computational complexity of deciding whether a given instance of a BCS game admits a perfect entangled strategy or not.Comment: Revised version corrects an error in the previous version of the proof of Theorem 1 that arises in the case of POVM measurement

    The Quantum PCP Conjecture

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    The classical PCP theorem is arguably the most important achievement of classical complexity theory in the past quarter century. In recent years, researchers in quantum computational complexity have tried to identify approaches and develop tools that address the question: does a quantum version of the PCP theorem hold? The story of this study starts with classical complexity and takes unexpected turns providing fascinating vistas on the foundations of quantum mechanics, the global nature of entanglement and its topological properties, quantum error correction, information theory, and much more; it raises questions that touch upon some of the most fundamental issues at the heart of our understanding of quantum mechanics. At this point, the jury is still out as to whether or not such a theorem holds. This survey aims to provide a snapshot of the status in this ongoing story, tailored to a general theory-of-CS audience.Comment: 45 pages, 4 figures, an enhanced version of the SIGACT guest column from Volume 44 Issue 2, June 201

    The Quantum Monad on Relational Structures

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    Homomorphisms between relational structures play a central role in finite model theory, constraint satisfaction, and database theory. A central theme in quantum computation is to show how quantum resources can be used to gain advantage in information processing tasks. In particular, non-local games have been used to exhibit quantum advantage in boolean constraint satisfaction, and to obtain quantum versions of graph invariants such as the chromatic number. We show how quantum strategies for homomorphism games between relational structures can be viewed as Kleisli morphisms for a quantum monad on the (classical) category of relational structures and homomorphisms. We use these results to exhibit a wide range of examples of contextuality-powered quantum advantage, and to unify several apparently diverse strands of previous work

    Generalized Satisfiability Problems via Operator Assignments

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    Schaefer introduced a framework for generalized satisfiability problems on the Boolean domain and characterized the computational complexity of such problems. We investigate an algebraization of Schaefer's framework in which the Fourier transform is used to represent constraints by multilinear polynomials in a unique way. The polynomial representation of constraints gives rise to a relaxation of the notion of satisfiability in which the values to variables are linear operators on some Hilbert space. For the case of constraints given by a system of linear equations over the two-element field, this relaxation has received considerable attention in the foundations of quantum mechanics, where such constructions as the Mermin-Peres magic square show that there are systems that have no solutions in the Boolean domain, but have solutions via operator assignments on some finite-dimensional Hilbert space. We obtain a complete characterization of the classes of Boolean relations for which there is a gap between satisfiability in the Boolean domain and the relaxation of satisfiability via operator assignments. To establish our main result, we adapt the notion of primitive-positive definability (pp-definability) to our setting, a notion that has been used extensively in the study of constraint satisfaction problems. Here, we show that pp-definability gives rise to gadget reductions that preserve satisfiability gaps. We also present several additional applications of this method. In particular and perhaps surprisingly, we show that the relaxed notion of pp-definability in which the quantified variables are allowed to range over operator assignments gives no additional expressive power in defining Boolean relations
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