Universality of Entanglement and Quantum Computation Complexity

We study the universality of scaling of entanglement in Shor's factoring algorithm and in adiabatic quantum algorithms across a quantum phase transition for both the NP-complete Exact Cover problem as well as the Grover's problem. The analytic result for Shor's algorithm shows a linear scaling of the entropy in terms of the number of qubits, therefore difficulting the possibility of an efficient classical simulation protocol. A similar result is obtained numerically for the quantum adiabatic evolution Exact Cover algorithm, which also shows universality of the quantum phase transition the system evolves nearby. On the other hand, entanglement in Grover's adiabatic algorithm remains a bounded quantity even at the critical point. A classification of scaling of entanglement appears as a natural grading of the computational complexity of simulating quantum phase transitions.Comment: 30 pages, 17 figures, accepted for publication in PR

Phase transition for cutting-plane approach to vertex-cover problem

We study the vertex-cover problem which is an NP-hard optimization problem and a prototypical model exhibiting phase transitions on random graphs, e.g., Erdoes-Renyi (ER) random graphs. These phase transitions coincide with changes of the solution space structure, e.g, for the ER ensemble at connectivity c=e=2.7183 from replica symmetric to replica-symmetry broken. For the vertex-cover problem, also the typical complexity of exact branch-and-bound algorithms, which proceed by exploring the landscape of feasible configurations, change close to this phase transition from "easy" to "hard". In this work, we consider an algorithm which has a completely different strategy: The problem is mapped onto a linear programming problem augmented by a cutting-plane approach, hence the algorithm operates in a space OUTSIDE the space of feasible configurations until the final step, where a solution is found. Here we show that this type of algorithm also exhibits an "easy-hard" transition around c=e, which strongly indicates that the typical hardness of a problem is fundamental to the problem and not due to a specific representation of the problem.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Adiabatic quantum computation and quantum phase transitions

We analyze the ground state entanglement in a quantum adiabatic evolution algorithm designed to solve the NP-complete Exact Cover problem. The entropy of entanglement seems to obey linear and universal scaling at the point where the mass gap becomes small, suggesting that the system passes near a quantum phase transition. Such a large scaling of entanglement suggests that the effective connectivity of the system diverges as the number of qubits goes to infinity and that this algorithm cannot be efficiently simulated by classical means. On the other hand, entanglement in Grover's algorithm is bounded by a constant.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in PR