Upper bounds on quantum query complexity inspired by the Elitzur-Vaidman bomb tester

Inspired by the Elitzur-Vaidman bomb testing problem [arXiv:hep-th/9305002], we introduce a new query complexity model, which we call bomb query complexity $B(f)$. We investigate its relationship with the usual quantum query complexity $Q(f)$, and show that $B(f)=\Theta(Q(f)^2)$. This result gives a new method to upper bound the quantum query complexity: we give a method of finding bomb query algorithms from classical algorithms, which then provide nonconstructive upper bounds on $Q(f)=\Theta(\sqrt{B(f)})$. We subsequently were able to give explicit quantum algorithms matching our upper bound method. We apply this method on the single-source shortest paths problem on unweighted graphs, obtaining an algorithm with $O(n^{1.5})$ quantum query complexity, improving the best known algorithm of $O(n^{1.5}\sqrt{\log n})$ [arXiv:quant-ph/0606127]. Applying this method to the maximum bipartite matching problem gives an $O(n^{1.75})$ algorithm, improving the best known trivial $O(n^2)$ upper bound.Comment: 32 pages. Minor revisions and corrections. Regev and Schiff's proof that P(OR) = \Omega(N) remove

Oracles with Costs

While powerful tools have been developed to analyze quantum query complexity, there are still many natural problems that do not fit neatly into the black box model of oracles. We create a new model that allows multiple oracles with differing costs. This model captures more of the difficulty of certain natural problems. We test this model on a simple problem, Search with Two Oracles, for which we create a quantum algorithm that we prove is asymptotically optimal. We further give some evidence, using a geometric picture of Grover\u27s algorithm, that our algorithm is exactly optimal

On relating one-way classical and quantum communication complexities

Communication complexity is the amount of communication needed to compute a function when the function inputs are distributed over multiple parties. In its simplest form, one-way communication complexity, Alice and Bob compute a function $f(x,y)$, where $x$ is given to Alice and $y$ is given to Bob, and only one message from Alice to Bob is allowed. A fundamental question in quantum information is the relationship between one-way quantum and classical communication complexities, i.e., how much shorter the message can be if Alice is sending a quantum state instead of bit strings? We make some progress towards this question with the following results. Let $f: \mathcal{X} \times \mathcal{Y} \rightarrow \mathcal{Z} \cup \{\bot\}$ be a partial function and $\mu$ be a distribution with support contained in $f^{-1}(\mathcal{Z})$. Denote $d=|\mathcal{Z}|$. Let $\mathsf{R}^{1,\mu}_\epsilon(f)$ be the classical one-way communication complexity of $f$; $\mathsf{Q}^{1,\mu}_\epsilon(f)$ be the quantum one-way communication complexity of $f$ and $\mathsf{Q}^{1,\mu, *}_\epsilon(f)$ be the entanglement-assisted quantum one-way communication complexity of $f$, each with distributional error (average error over $\mu$) at most $\epsilon$. We show: 1) If $\mu$ is a product distribution, $\eta > 0$ and $0 \leq \epsilon \leq 1-1/d$, then, $$\mathsf{R}^{1,\mu}_{2\epsilon -d\epsilon^2/(d-1)+ \eta}(f) \leq 2\mathsf{Q}^{1,\mu, *}_{\epsilon}(f) + O(\log\log (1/\eta))\enspace.$$ 2)If $\mu$ is a non-product distribution and $\mathcal{Z}=\{ 0,1\}$, then $\forall \epsilon, \eta > 0$ such that $\epsilon/\eta + \eta < 0.5$, $$\mathsf{R}^{1,\mu}_{3\eta}(f) = O(\mathsf{Q}^{1,\mu}_{{\epsilon}}(f) \cdot \mathsf{CS}(f)/\eta^3)\enspace,$$ where \[\mathsf{CS}(f) = \max_{y} \min_{z\in\{0,1\}} \vert \{x~|~f(x,y)=z\} \vert \enspace.\

Efficient learning of tt-doped stabilizer states with single-copy measurements

One of the primary objectives in the field of quantum state learning is to develop algorithms that are time-efficient for learning states generated from quantum circuits. Earlier investigations have demonstrated time-efficient algorithms for states generated from Clifford circuits with at most $\log(n)$ non-Clifford gates. However, these algorithms necessitate multi-copy measurements, posing implementation challenges in the near term due to the requisite quantum memory. On the contrary, using solely single-qubit measurements in the computational basis is insufficient in learning even the output distribution of a Clifford circuit with one additional $T$ gate under reasonable post-quantum cryptographic assumptions. In this work, we introduce an efficient quantum algorithm that employs only nonadaptive single-copy measurement to learn states produced by Clifford circuits with a maximum of $O(\log n)$ non-Clifford gates, filling a gap between the previous positive and negative results.Comment: 6 page

Quantum-Inspired Sublinear Algorithm for Solving Low-Rank Semidefinite Programming

Semidefinite programming (SDP) is a central topic in mathematical optimization with extensive studies on its efficient solvers. In this paper, we present a proof-of-principle sublinear-time algorithm for solving SDPs with low-rank constraints; specifically, given an SDP with $m$ constraint matrices, each of dimension $n$ and rank $r$, our algorithm can compute any entry and efficient descriptions of the spectral decomposition of the solution matrix. The algorithm runs in time $O(m\cdot\mathrm{poly}(\log n,r,1/\varepsilon))$ given access to a sampling-based low-overhead data structure for the constraint matrices, where $\varepsilon$ is the precision of the solution. In addition, we apply our algorithm to a quantum state learning task as an application. Technically, our approach aligns with 1) SDP solvers based on the matrix multiplicative weight (MMW) framework by Arora and Kale [TOC '12]; 2) sampling-based dequantizing framework pioneered by Tang [STOC '19]. In order to compute the matrix exponential required in the MMW framework, we introduce two new techniques that may be of independent interest: $\bullet$ Weighted sampling: assuming sampling access to each individual constraint matrix $A_{1},\ldots,A_{\tau}$, we propose a procedure that gives a good approximation of $A=A_{1}+\cdots+A_{\tau}$. $\bullet$ Symmetric approximation: we propose a sampling procedure that gives the \emph{spectral decomposition} of a low-rank Hermitian matrix $A$. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first sampling-based algorithm for spectral decomposition, as previous works only give singular values and vectors.Comment: 37 pages, 1 figure. To appear in the Proceedings of the 45th International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science (MFCS 2020