Computational depth complexity of measurement-based quantum computation

We prove that one-way quantum computations have the same computational power as quantum circuits with unbounded fan-out. It demonstrates that the one-way model is not only one of the most promising models of physical realisation, but also a very powerful model of quantum computation. It confirms and completes previous results which have pointed out, for some specific problems, a depth separation between the one-way model and the quantum circuit model. Since one-way model has the same computational power as unbounded quantum fan-out circuits, the quantum Fourier transform can be approximated in constant depth in the one-way model, and thus the factorisation can be done by a polytime probabilistic classical algorithm which has access to a constant-depth one-way quantum computer. The extra power of the one-way model, comparing with the quantum circuit model, comes from its classical-quantum hybrid nature. We show that this extra power is reduced to the capability to perform unbounded classical parity gates in constant depth.Comment: 12 page

Bounds on the Power of Constant-Depth Quantum Circuits

We show that if a language is recognized within certain error bounds by constant-depth quantum circuits over a finite family of gates, then it is computable in (classical) polynomial time. In particular, our results imply EQNC^0 is contained in P, where EQNC^0 is the constant-depth analog of the class EQP. On the other hand, we adapt and extend ideas of Terhal and DiVincenzo (quant-ph/0205133) to show that, for any family F of quantum gates including Hadamard and CNOT gates, computing the acceptance probabilities of depth-five circuits over F is just as hard as computing these probabilities for circuits over F. In particular, this implies that NQNC^0 = NQACC = NQP = coC=P where NQNC^0 is the constant-depth analog of the class NQP. This essentially refutes a conjecture of Green et al. that NQACC is contained in TC^0 (quant-ph/0106017)

Small Depth Quantum Circuits

Small depth quantum circuits have proved to be unexpectedly powerful in comparison to their classical counterparts. We survey some of the recent work on this and present some open problems.National Security Agency; Advanced Research and Development Agency under Army Research Office (DAAD 19-02-1-0058

Binary Matroids and Quantum Probability Distributions

We characterise the probability distributions that arise from quantum circuits all of whose gates commute, and show when these distributions can be classically simulated efficiently. We consider also marginal distributions and the computation of correlation coefficients, and draw connections between the simulation of stabiliser circuits and the combinatorics of representable matroids, as developed in the 1990s.Comment: 24 pages (inc appendix & refs

Universal Quantum Circuits

We define and construct efficient depth-universal and almost-size-universal quantum circuits. Such circuits can be viewed as general-purpose simulators for central classes of quantum circuits and can be used to capture the computational power of the circuit class being simulated. For depth we construct universal circuits whose depth is the same order as the circuits being simulated. For size, there is a log factor blow-up in the universal circuits constructed here. We prove that this construction is nearly optimal.Comment: 13 page

Depth-2 QAC circuits cannot simulate quantum parity

We show that the quantum parity gate on $n > 3$ qubits cannot be cleanly simulated by a quantum circuit with two layers of arbitrary C-SIGN gates of any arity and arbitrary 1-qubit unitary gates, regardless of the number of allowed ancilla qubits. This is the best known and first nontrivial separation between the parity gate and circuits of this form. The same bounds also apply to the quantum fanout gate. Our results are incomparable with those of Fang et al. [3], which apply to any constant depth but require a sublinear number of ancilla qubits on the simulating circuit.Comment: 21 pages, 2 figure

A New Lower Bound Technique for Quantum Circuits without Ancillae

We present a technique to derive depth lower bounds for quantum circuits. The technique is based on the observation that in circuits without ancillae, only a few input states can set all the control qubits of a Toffoli gate to 1. This can be used to selectively remove large Toffoli gates from a quantum circuit while keeping the cumulative error low. We use the technique to give another proof that parity cannot be computed by constant depth quantum circuits without ancillæ