265 research outputs found
The Quantum PCP Conjecture
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
Quantum Hamiltonian Complexity
Constraint satisfaction problems are a central pillar of modern computational
complexity theory. This survey provides an introduction to the rapidly growing
field of Quantum Hamiltonian Complexity, which includes the study of quantum
constraint satisfaction problems. Over the past decade and a half, this field
has witnessed fundamental breakthroughs, ranging from the establishment of a
"Quantum Cook-Levin Theorem" to deep insights into the structure of 1D
low-temperature quantum systems via so-called area laws. Our aim here is to
provide a computer science-oriented introduction to the subject in order to
help bridge the language barrier between computer scientists and physicists in
the field. As such, we include the following in this survey: (1) The
motivations and history of the field, (2) a glossary of condensed matter
physics terms explained in computer-science friendly language, (3) overviews of
central ideas from condensed matter physics, such as indistinguishable
particles, mean field theory, tensor networks, and area laws, and (4) brief
expositions of selected computer science-based results in the area. For
example, as part of the latter, we provide a novel information theoretic
presentation of Bravyi's polynomial time algorithm for Quantum 2-SAT.Comment: v4: published version, 127 pages, introduction expanded to include
brief introduction to quantum information, brief list of some recent
developments added, minor changes throughou
A simple proof of the detectability lemma and spectral gap amplification
The detectability lemma is a useful tool for probing the structure of gapped ground states of frustration-free Hamiltonians of lattice spin models. The lemma provides an estimate on the error incurred by approximating the ground space projector with a product of local projectors. We provide a simpler proof for the detectability lemma which applies to an arbitrary ordering of the local projectors, and show that it is tight up to a constant factor. As an application, we show how the lemma can be combined with a strong converse by Gao to obtain local spectral gap amplification: We show that by coarse graining a local frustration-free Hamiltonian with a spectral gap γ>0 to a length scale O(γ^(−1/2)), one gets a Hamiltonian with an Ω(1) spectral gap
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