13 research outputs found
Quantum algorithms for testing properties of distributions
Suppose one has access to oracles generating samples from two unknown
probability distributions P and Q on some N-element set. How many samples does
one need to test whether the two distributions are close or far from each other
in the L_1-norm ? This and related questions have been extensively studied
during the last years in the field of property testing. In the present paper we
study quantum algorithms for testing properties of distributions. It is shown
that the L_1-distance between P and Q can be estimated with a constant
precision using approximately N^{1/2} queries in the quantum settings, whereas
classical computers need \Omega(N) queries. We also describe quantum algorithms
for testing Uniformity and Orthogonality with query complexity O(N^{1/3}). The
classical query complexity of these problems is known to be \Omega(N^{1/2}).Comment: 20 page
Adiabatic quantum algorithm for search engine ranking
We propose an adiabatic quantum algorithm for generating a quantum pure state
encoding of the PageRank vector, the most widely used tool in ranking the
relative importance of internet pages. We present extensive numerical
simulations which provide evidence that this algorithm can prepare the quantum
PageRank state in a time which, on average, scales polylogarithmically in the
number of webpages. We argue that the main topological feature of the
underlying web graph allowing for such a scaling is the out-degree
distribution. The top ranked entries of the quantum PageRank state
can then be estimated with a polynomial quantum speedup. Moreover, the quantum
PageRank state can be used in "q-sampling" protocols for testing properties of
distributions, which require exponentially fewer measurements than all
classical schemes designed for the same task. This can be used to decide
whether to run a classical update of the PageRank.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures; closer to published versio
Distributional property testing in a quantum world
A fundamental problem in statistics and learning theory is to test properties of distributions. We show that quantum computers can solve such problems with significant speed-ups. In particular, we give fast quantum algorithms for testing closeness between unknown distributions, testing independence between two distributions, and estimating the Shannon / von Neumann entropy of distributions. The distributions can be either classical or quantum, however our quantum algorithms require coherent quantum access to a process preparing the samples. Our results build on the recent technique of quantum singular value transformation, combined with more standard tricks such as divide-and-conquer. The presented approach is a natural fit for distributional property testing both in the classical and the quantum case, demonstrating the first speed-ups for testing properties of density operators that can be accessed coherently rather than only via sampling; for classical distributions our algorithms significantly improve the precision dependence of some earlier results
Quantum query complexity of entropy estimation
Estimation of Shannon and R\'enyi entropies of unknown discrete distributions
is a fundamental problem in statistical property testing and an active research
topic in both theoretical computer science and information theory. Tight bounds
on the number of samples to estimate these entropies have been established in
the classical setting, while little is known about their quantum counterparts.
In this paper, we give the first quantum algorithms for estimating
-R\'enyi entropies (Shannon entropy being 1-Renyi entropy). In
particular, we demonstrate a quadratic quantum speedup for Shannon entropy
estimation and a generic quantum speedup for -R\'enyi entropy
estimation for all , including a tight bound for the
collision-entropy (2-R\'enyi entropy). We also provide quantum upper bounds for
extreme cases such as the Hartley entropy (i.e., the logarithm of the support
size of a distribution, corresponding to ) and the min-entropy case
(i.e., ), as well as the Kullback-Leibler divergence between
two distributions. Moreover, we complement our results with quantum lower
bounds on -R\'enyi entropy estimation for all .Comment: 43 pages, 1 figur
Distributional property testing in a quantum world
A fundamental problem in statistics and learning theory is to test properties of distributions. We show that quantum computers can solve such problems with significant speed-ups. We also introduce a novel access model for quantum distributions, enabling the coherent preparation of quantum samples, and propose a general framework that can naturally handle both classical and quantum distributions in a unified manner. Our framework generalizes and improves previous quantum algorithms for testing closeness between unknown distributions, testing independence between two distributions, and estimating the Shannon/von Neumann entropy of distributions. For classical distributions our algorithms significantly improve the precision dependence of some earlier results. We also show that in our framework procedures for classical distributions can be directly lifted to the more general case of quantum distributions, and thus obtain the first speed-ups for testing properties of density operators that can be accessed coherently rather than only via sampling
Quantum speedup of Monte Carlo methods
Monte Carlo methods use random sampling to estimate numerical quantities which are hard to compute deterministically. One important example is the use in statistical physics of rapidly mixing Markov chains to approximately compute partition functions. In this work we describe a quantum algorithm which can accelerate Monte Carlo methods in a very general setting. The algorithm estimates the expected output value of an arbitrary randomised or quantum subrou-tine with bounded variance, achieving a near-quadratic speedup over the best possible classical algorithm. Combining the algorithm with the use of quantum walks gives a quantum speedup of the fastest known classical algorithms with rigorous performance bounds for computing partition functions, which use multiple-stage Markov chain Monte Carlo techniques. The quantum algo-rithm can also be used to estimate the total variation distance between probability distributions efficiently.