182 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 Proofs
Quantum information and computation provide a fascinating twist on the notion
of proofs in computational complexity theory. For instance, one may consider a
quantum computational analogue of the complexity class \class{NP}, known as
QMA, in which a quantum state plays the role of a proof (also called a
certificate or witness), and is checked by a polynomial-time quantum
computation. For some problems, the fact that a quantum proof state could be a
superposition over exponentially many classical states appears to offer
computational advantages over classical proof strings. In the interactive proof
system setting, one may consider a verifier and one or more provers that
exchange and process quantum information rather than classical information
during an interaction for a given input string, giving rise to quantum
complexity classes such as QIP, QSZK, and QMIP* that represent natural quantum
analogues of IP, SZK, and MIP. While quantum interactive proof systems inherit
some properties from their classical counterparts, they also possess distinct
and uniquely quantum features that lead to an interesting landscape of
complexity classes based on variants of this model.
In this survey we provide an overview of many of the known results concerning
quantum proofs, computational models based on this concept, and properties of
the complexity classes they define. In particular, we discuss non-interactive
proofs and the complexity class QMA, single-prover quantum interactive proof
systems and the complexity class QIP, statistical zero-knowledge quantum
interactive proof systems and the complexity class \class{QSZK}, and
multiprover interactive proof systems and the complexity classes QMIP, QMIP*,
and MIP*.Comment: Survey published by NOW publisher
An Application of Quantum Finite Automata to Interactive Proof Systems
Quantum finite automata have been studied intensively since their
introduction in late 1990s as a natural model of a quantum computer with
finite-dimensional quantum memory space. This paper seeks their direct
application to interactive proof systems in which a mighty quantum prover
communicates with a quantum-automaton verifier through a common communication
cell. Our quantum interactive proof systems are juxtaposed to
Dwork-Stockmeyer's classical interactive proof systems whose verifiers are
two-way probabilistic automata. We demonstrate strengths and weaknesses of our
systems and further study how various restrictions on the behaviors of
quantum-automaton verifiers affect the power of quantum interactive proof
systems.Comment: This is an extended version of the conference paper in the
Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Implementation and
Application of Automata, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer-Verlag,
Kingston, Canada, July 22-24, 200
Guest Column: 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 and multipartite entanglement, topology and the so-called phenomenon of topological order, 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
Quantum Merlin-Arthur proof systems for synthesizing quantum states
Complexity theory typically focuses on the difficulty of solving
computational problems using classical inputs and outputs, even with a quantum
computer. In the quantum world, it is natural to apply a different notion of
complexity, namely the complexity of synthesizing quantum states. We
investigate a state-synthesizing counterpart of the class NP, referred to as
stateQMA, which is concerned with preparing certain quantum states through a
polynomial-time quantum verifier with the aid of a single quantum message from
an all-powerful but untrusted prover. This is a subclass of the class stateQIP
recently introduced by Rosenthal and Yuen (ITCS 2022), which permits
polynomially many interactions between the prover and the verifier. Our main
result consists of error reduction of this class and its variants with an
exponentially small gap or a bounded space, as well as how this class relates
to other fundamental state synthesizing classes, i.e., states generated by
uniform polynomial-time quantum circuits (stateBQP) and space-uniform
polynomial-space quantum circuits (statePSPACE). Furthermore, we establish that
the family of UQMA witnesses, considered as one of the most natural candidates,
is in stateQMA. Additionally, we demonstrate that stateQCMA achieves perfect
completeness.Comment: 31 pages. v2: minor changes. v3: add a new result - UQMA witness
family is in stateQM
Computational complexity theory and the philosophy of mathematics
Computational complexity theory is a subfield of computer science originating in computability theory and the study of algorithms for solving practical mathematical problems. Amongst its aims is classifying problems by their degree of difficulty — i.e., how hard they are to solve computationally. This paper highlights the significance of complexity theory relative to questions traditionally asked by philosophers of mathematics while also attempting to isolate some new ones — e.g., about the notion of feasibility in mathematics, the P≠NP problem and why it has proven hard to resolve, and the role of non-classical modes of computation and proof
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