1,728 research outputs found
Computational Difficulty of Computing the Density of States
We study the computational difficulty of computing the ground state
degeneracy and the density of states for local Hamiltonians. We show that the
difficulty of both problems is exactly captured by a class which we call #BQP,
which is the counting version of the quantum complexity class QMA. We show that
#BQP is not harder than its classical counting counterpart #P, which in turn
implies that computing the ground state degeneracy or the density of states for
classical Hamiltonians is just as hard as it is for quantum Hamiltonians.Comment: v2: Accepted version. 9 pages, 1 figur
Quantum interactive proofs with short messages
This paper considers three variants of quantum interactive proof systems in
which short (meaning logarithmic-length) messages are exchanged between the
prover and verifier. The first variant is one in which the verifier sends a
short message to the prover, and the prover responds with an ordinary, or
polynomial-length, message; the second variant is one in which any number of
messages can be exchanged, but where the combined length of all the messages is
logarithmic; and the third variant is one in which the verifier sends
polynomially many random bits to the prover, who responds with a short quantum
message. We prove that in all of these cases the short messages can be
eliminated without changing the power of the model, so the first variant has
the expressive power of QMA and the second and third variants have the
expressive power of BQP. These facts are proved through the use of quantum
state tomography, along with the finite quantum de Finetti theorem for the
first variant.Comment: 15 pages, published versio
Uniform Diagonalization Theorem for Complexity Classes of Promise Problems including Randomized and Quantum Classes
Diagonalization in the spirit of Cantor's diagonal arguments is a widely used
tool in theoretical computer sciences to obtain structural results about
computational problems and complexity classes by indirect proofs. The Uniform
Diagonalization Theorem allows the construction of problems outside complexity
classes while still being reducible to a specific decision problem. This paper
provides a generalization of the Uniform Diagonalization Theorem by extending
it to promise problems and the complexity classes they form, e.g. randomized
and quantum complexity classes. The theorem requires from the underlying
computing model not only the decidability of its acceptance and rejection
behaviour but also of its promise-contradicting indifferent behaviour - a
property that we will introduce as "total decidability" of promise problems.
Implications of the Uniform Diagonalization Theorem are mainly of two kinds:
1. Existence of intermediate problems (e.g. between BQP and QMA) - also known
as Ladner's Theorem - and 2. Undecidability if a problem of a complexity class
is contained in a subclass (e.g. membership of a QMA-problem in BQP). Like the
original Uniform Diagonalization Theorem the extension applies besides BQP and
QMA to a large variety of complexity class pairs, including combinations from
deterministic, randomized and quantum classes.Comment: 15 page
Pseudorandom generators and the BQP vs. PH problem
It is a longstanding open problem to devise an oracle relative to which BQP
does not lie in the Polynomial-Time Hierarchy (PH). We advance a natural
conjecture about the capacity of the Nisan-Wigderson pseudorandom generator
[NW94] to fool AC_0, with MAJORITY as its hard function. Our conjecture is
essentially that the loss due to the hybrid argument (which is a component of
the standard proof from [NW94]) can be avoided in this setting. This is a
question that has been asked previously in the pseudorandomness literature
[BSW03]. We then make three main contributions: (1) We show that our conjecture
implies the existence of an oracle relative to which BQP is not in the PH. This
entails giving an explicit construction of unitary matrices, realizable by
small quantum circuits, whose row-supports are "nearly-disjoint." (2) We give a
simple framework (generalizing the setting of Aaronson [A10]) in which any
efficiently quantumly computable unitary gives rise to a distribution that can
be distinguished from the uniform distribution by an efficient quantum
algorithm. When applied to the unitaries we construct, this framework yields a
problem that can be solved quantumly, and which forms the basis for the desired
oracle. (3) We prove that Aaronson's "GLN conjecture" [A10] implies our
conjecture; our conjecture is thus formally easier to prove. The GLN conjecture
was recently proved false for depth greater than 2 [A10a], but it remains open
for depth 2. If true, the depth-2 version of either conjecture would imply an
oracle relative to which BQP is not in AM, which is itself an outstanding open
problem. Taken together, our results have the following interesting
interpretation: they give an instantiation of the Nisan-Wigderson generator
that can be broken by quantum computers, but not by the relevant modes of
classical computation, if our conjecture is true.Comment: Updated in light of counterexample to the GLN conjectur
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