Whether the class QMA (Quantum Merlin Arthur) is equal to QMA1, or QMA with one-sided error, has been an open problem for years. This note helps to explain why the problem is difficult, by using ideas from real analysis to give a "quantum oracle" relative to which they are different. As a byproduct, we find that there are facts about quantum complexity classes that are classically relativizing but not quantumly relativizing, among them such "trivial" containments as BQP in ZQEXP.
We prove that approximating the ground energy of the antiferromagnetic XY model on a simple graph at fixed magnetization (given as part of the instance specification) is QMA-complete. To show this, we strengthen a previous result by establishing QMA-completeness for approximating the ground energy of the Bose-Hubbard model on simple graphs. Using a connection between the XY and Bose-Hubbard models that we exploited in previous work, this establishes QMA-completeness of the XY model.
This paper gives a QMA (Quantum Merlin-Arthur) protocol for 3-SAT with two logarithmic-size quantum proofs (that are not entangled with each other) such that the gap between the completeness and the soundness is Omega(1/n polylog(n)). This improves the best completeness/soundness gaps known for NP-complete problems in this setting.
Although it is believed unlikely that $\NP$-hard problems admit efficient quantum algorithms, it has been shown that a quantum verifier can solve $\NP$-complete problems given a "short" quantum proof; more precisely, $\NP\subseteq \QMA_{\log}(2)$ where $\QMA_{\log}(2)$ denotes the class of quantum Merlin-Arthur games in which there are two unentangled provers who send two logarithmic size quantum witnesses to the verifier. The inclusion $\NP\subseteq \QMA_{\log}(2)$ has been proved by Blier and Tapp by stating a quantum Merlin-Arthur protocol for 3-coloring with perfect completeness and gap $\…
This paper presents stronger methods of achieving perfect completeness in quantum interactive proofs. First, it is proved that any problem in QMA has a two-message quantum interactive proof system of perfect completeness with constant soundness error, where the verifier has only to send a constant number of halves of EPR pairs. This in particular implies that the class QMA is necessarily included by the class QIP_1(2) of problems having two-message quantum interactive proofs of perfect completeness, which gives the first nontrivial upper bound for QMA in terms of quantum interactive proofs. It…
The complexity class QMA is the quantum analog of the classical complexity class NP. The functional analogs of NP and QMA, called functional NP (FNP) and functional QMA (FQMA), consist in either outputting a (classical or quantum) witness, or outputting NO if there does not exist a witness.The classical complexity class Total Functional NP (TFNP) is the subset of FNP for which it can be shown that the NO outcome never occurs. TFNP includes many natural and important problems. In the present work we introduce the complexity class of Total Functional QMA (TFQMA), the quantum analog of TFNP. We s…
The quantum PCP (QPCP) conjecture states that all problems in QMA, the quantum analogue of NP, admit quantum verifiers that only act on a constant number of qubits of a polynomial size quantum proof and have a constant gap between completeness and soundness. Despite an impressive body of work trying to prove or disprove the quantum PCP conjecture, it still remains widely open. The above-mentioned proof verification statement has also been shown equivalent to the QMA-completeness of the Local Hamiltonian problem with constant relative gap. Nevertheless, unlike in the classical case, no equivale…
We introduce the quantum complexity class FQMA. This class describes the complexity of generating a quantum state that serves as a witness for a given QMA problem. In a certain sense, FQMA is the quantum analogue of FNP (function problems associated with NP). The latter describes the complexity of finding a succinct proof for a NP decision problem. Whereas all FNP problems can be reduced to NP, there is no obvious reduction of FQMA to QMA since the solution of FQMA is a quantum state and the solution of QMA the answer yes or no. We consider quantum state generators that get classical descripti…
The class QMA(k), introduced by Kobayashi et al., consists of all languages that can be verified using k unentangled quantum proofs. Many of the simplest questions about this class have remained embarrassingly open: for example, can we give any evidence that k quantum proofs are more powerful than one? Does QMA(k)=QMA(2) for k>=2? Can QMA(k) protocols be amplified to exponentially small error? In this paper, we make progress on all of the above questions. First, we give a protocol by which a verifier can be convinced that a 3SAT formula of size n is satisfiable, with constant soundness, given …
Prior work has established that all problems in NP admit classical zero-knowledge proof systems, and under reasonable hardness assumptions for quantum computations, these proof systems can be made secure against quantum attacks. We prove a result representing a further quantum generalization of this fact, which is that every problem in the complexity class QMA has a quantum zero-knowledge proof system. More specifically, assuming the existence of an unconditionally binding and quantum computationally concealing commitment scheme, we prove that every problem in the complexity class QMA has a qu…
We prove that 2-Local Hamiltonian (2-LH) with Low Complexity problem is QCMA-complete by combining the results from the QMA-completeness[4] of 2-LH and QCMA-completeness of 3-LH with Low Complexity[6]. The idea is straightforward. It has been known that 2-LH is QMA-complete. By putting a low complexity constraint on the input state, we make the problem QCMA. Finally, we use similar arguments as in [4] to show that all QCMA problems can be reduced to our proposed problem.
We describe Kitaev's result from 1999, in which he defines the complexity class QMA, the quantum analog of the class NP, and shows that a natural extension of 3-SAT, namely local Hamiltonians, is QMA complete. The result builds upon the classical Cook-Levin proof of the NP completeness of SAT, but differs from it in several fundamental ways, which we highlight. This result raises a rich array of open problems related to quantum complexity, algorithms and entanglement, which we state at the end of this survey. This survey is the extension of lecture notes taken by Naveh for Aharonov's quantum c…
One of the main problems in quantum complexity theory is that our understanding of the theory of QMA-completeness is not as rich as its classical analogue, the NP- completeness. In this paper we consider the clique problem in graphs, which is NP- complete, and try to find its quantum analogue. We show that, quantum clique problem can be defined as follows; Given a quantum channel, decide whether there are k states that are distinguishable, with no error, after passing through channel. This definition comes from reconsidering the clique problem in terms of the zero-error capacity of graphs, and…
We present a classical interactive protocol that verifies the validity of a quantum witness state for the local Hamiltonian problem. It follows from this protocol that approximating the non-local value of a multi-player one-round game to inverse polynomial precision is QMA-hard. Our work makes an interesting connection between the theory of QMA-completeness and Hamiltonian complexity on one hand and the study of non-local games and Bell inequalities on the other.
It has been established that local lattice spin Hamiltonians can be used for universal adiabatic quantum computation. However, the 2-local model Hamiltonians used in these proofs are general and hence do not limit the types of interactions required between spins. To address this concern, the present paper provides two simple model Hamiltonians that are of practical interest to experimentalists working towards the realization of a universal adiabatic quantum computer. The model Hamiltonians presented are the simplest known QMA-complete 2-local Hamiltonians. The 2-local Ising model with 1-local …
Estimation of the minimum eigenvalue of a quantum Hamiltonian can be formalised as the Local Hamiltonian problem. We study the natural special case of the Local Hamiltonian problem where the same 2-local interaction, with differing weights, is applied across each pair of qubits. First we consider antiferromagnetic/ferromagnetic interactions, where the weights of the terms in the Hamiltonian are restricted to all be of the same sign. We show that for symmetric 2-local interactions with no 1-local part, the problem is either QMA-complete or in StoqMA. In particular the antiferromagnetic Heisenbe…
This paper proves that classical-witness quantum Merlin-Arthur proof systems can achieve perfect completeness. That is, QCMA = QCMA1. This holds under any gate set with which the Hadamard and arbitrary classical reversible transformations can be exactly implemented, e.g., {Hadamard, Toffoli, NOT}. The proof is quantumly nonrelativizing, and uses a simple but novel quantum technique that additively adjusts the success probability, which may be of independent interest.
We study the computational strength of quantum particles (each of finite dimensionality) arranged on a line. First, we prove that it is possible to perform universal adiabatic quantum computation using a one-dimensional quantum system (with 9 states per particle). This might have practical implications for experimentalists interested in constructing an adiabatic quantum computer. Building on the same construction, but with some additional technical effort and 12 states per particle, we show that the problem of approximating the ground state energy of a system composed of a line of quantum part…
We study three variants of multi-prover quantum Merlin-Arthur proof systems. We first show that the class of problems that can be efficiently verified using polynomially many quantum proofs, each of logarithmic-size, is exactly MQA (also known as QCMA), the class of problems which can be efficiently verified via a classical proof and a quantum verifier. We then study the class BellQMA(poly), characterized by a verifier who first applies unentangled, nonadaptive measurements to each of the polynomially many proofs, followed by an arbitrary but efficient quantum verification circuit on the resul…
An important task in quantum physics is the estimation of local quantities for ground states of local Hamiltonians. Recently, [Ambainis, CCC 2014] defined the complexity class P^QMA[log], and motivated its study by showing that the physical task of estimating the expectation value of a local observable against the ground state of a local Hamiltonian is P^QMA[log]-complete. In this paper, we continue the study of P^QMA[log], obtaining the following lower and upper bounds. Lower bounds (hardness results): (1) The P^QMA[log]-completeness result of [Ambainis, CCC 2014] requires O(log n)-local obse…
The calculation of ground-state energies of physical systems can be formalised as the k-local Hamiltonian problem, which is the natural quantum analogue of classical constraint satisfaction problems. One way of making the problem more physically meaningful is to restrict the Hamiltonian in question by picking its terms from a fixed set S. Examples of such special cases are the Heisenberg and Ising models from condensed-matter physics. In this work we characterise the complexity of this problem for all 2-local qubit Hamiltonians. Depending on the subset S, the problem falls into one of the foll…
A central result in the study of Quantum Hamiltonian Complexity is that the k-Local hamiltonian problem is QMA-complete. In that problem, we must decide if the lowest eigenvalue of a Hamiltonian is bounded below some value, or above another, promised one of these is true. Given the ground state of the Hamiltonian, a quantum computer can determine this question, even if the ground state itself may not be efficiently quantum preparable. Kitaev's proof of QMA-completeness encodes a unitary quantum circuit in QMA into the ground space of a Hamiltonian. However, we now have quantum computing models…
This paper develops general space-efficient methods for error reduction for unitary quantum computation. Consider a polynomial-time quantum computation with completeness $c$ and soundness $s$, either with or without a witness (corresponding to QMA and BQP, respectively). To convert this computation into a new computation with error at most $2^{-p}$, the most space-efficient method known requires extra workspace of ${O \bigl( p \log \frac{1}{c-s} \bigr)}$ qubits. This space requirement is too large for scenarios like logarithmic-space quantum computations. This paper presents error-reduction me…
This paper studies the complexity classes QZK and HVQZK of problems having a quantum computational zero-knowledge proof system and an honest-verifier quantum computational zero-knowledge proof system, respectively. The results proved in this paper include: (a) HVQZK = QZK, (b) any problem in QZK has a public-coin quantum computational zero-knowledge proof system, (c) any problem in QZK has a quantum computational zero-knowledge proof system of perfect completeness, and (d) any problem in QZK has a three-message public-coin quantum computational zero-knowledge proof system of perfect completene…
Decision problems are the problems whose answer is either YES or NO. As the quantum analogue of $\mathsf{NP}$ (nondeterministic polynomial time), the class $\mathsf{QMA}$ (quantum Merlin-Arthur) contains the decision problems whose YES instance can be verified efficiently with a quantum computer. The problem of deciding the group non-membership (GNM) of a group element is known to be in $\mathsf{QMA}$. Previous works on the verification of GNM required a quantum circuit with $O(n^5)$ group oracle calls. Here we propose an efficient way to verify GNM problems, reducing the circuit depth to $O(1…
In this article we introduce a new complexity class called PQMA_log(2). Informally, this is the class of languages for which membership has a logarithmic-size quantum proof with perfect completeness and soundness which is polynomially close to 1 in a context where the verifier is provided a proof with two unentangled parts. We then show that PQMA_log(2) = NP. For this to be possible, it is important, when defining the class, not to give too much power to the verifier. This result, when compared to the fact that QMA_log = BQP, gives us new insight on the power of quantum information and the imp…
This paper studies quantum Arthur-Merlin games, which are Arthur-Merlin games in which Arthur and Merlin can perform quantum computations and Merlin can send Arthur quantum information. As in the classical case, messages from Arthur to Merlin are restricted to be strings of uniformly generated random bits. It is proved that for one-message quantum Arthur-Merlin games, which correspond to the complexity class QMA, completeness and soundness errors can be reduced exponentially without increasing the length of Merlin's message. Previous constructions for reducing error required a polynomial incre…
Defining and measuring the error of a measurement is one of the most fundamental activities in experimental science. However, quantum theory shows a peculiar difficulty in extending the classical notion of root-mean-square (rms) error to quantum measurements. A straightforward generalization based on the noise-operator was used to reformulate Heisenberg's uncertainty relation for the accuracy of simultaneous measurements to be universally valid and made the conventional formulation testable to observe its violation. Recently, its reliability was examined based on an anomaly that the error vani…
This paper studies multiple-proof quantum Merlin-Arthur (QMA) proof systems in the setting when the completeness-soundness gap is small. Small means that we only lower-bound the gap with an inverse-exponential function of the input length, or with an even smaller function. Using the protocol of Blier and Tapp [arXiv:0709.0738], we show that in this case the proof system has the same expressive power as non-deterministic exponential time (NEXP). Since single-proof QMA proof systems, with the same bound on the gap, have expressive power at most exponential time (EXP), we get a separation between…
On the Complexity of Finding Decoherence Free Subspaces
Center for Quantum Information and Control, University of New Mexico（新墨西哥大学量子信息与控制中心）；Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of New Mexico（新墨西哥大学物理与天文学系）
This paper considers the following problem. Two mixed-state quantum circuits Q and R are given, and the goal is to determine which of two possibilities holds: (i) Q and R act nearly identically on all possible quantum state inputs, or (ii) there exists some input state that Q and R transform into almost perfectly distinguishable outputs. This problem may be viewed as an abstraction of the following problem: given two physical processes described by sequences of local interactions, are the processes effectively the same or are they different? We prove that this problem is a complete promise pro…
This thesis studies three topics in quantum computation and information: The approximability of quantum problems, quantum proof systems, and non-classical correlations in quantum systems. In the first area, we demonstrate a polynomial-time (classical) approximation algorithm for dense instances of the canonical QMA-complete quantum constraint satisfaction problem, the local Hamiltonian problem. In the opposite direction, we next introduce a quantum generalization of the polynomial-time hierarchy, and define problems which we prove are not only complete for the second level of this hierarchy, b…
In this work we consider the interplay between multiprover interactive proofs, quantum entanglement, and zero knowledge proofs - notions that are central pillars of complexity theory, quantum information and cryptography. In particular, we study the relationship between the complexity class MIP$^*$, the set of languages decidable by multiprover interactive proofs with quantumly entangled provers, and the class PZKMIP$^*$, which is the set of languages decidable by MIP$^*$ protocols that furthermore possess the perfect zero knowledge property. Our main result is that the two classes are equal, …
Motivated by understanding the power of quantum computation with restricted number of qubits, we give two complete characterizations of unitary quantum space bounded computation. First we show that approximating an element of the inverse of a well-conditioned efficiently encoded $2^{k(n)}\times 2^{k(n)}$ matrix is complete for the class of problems solvable by quantum circuits acting on $\mathcal{O}(k(n))$ qubits with all measurements at the end of the computation. Similarly, estimating the minimum eigenvalue of an efficiently encoded Hermitian $2^{k(n)}\times 2^{k(n)}$ matrix is also complete…
The class of languages having polynomial-time classical or quantum interactive proof systems ($\mathsf{IP}$ or $\mathsf{QIP}$, respectively) is identical to $\mathsf{PSPACE}$. We show that $\mathsf{PSPACE}$ (and so $\mathsf{QIP}$) is subset of $\mathsf{AM(2QCFA)}$, the class of languages having Arthur-Merlin proof systems where the verifiers are two-way finite automata with quantum and classical states (2QCFAs) communicating with the provers classically. Our protocols use only rational-valued quantum transitions and run in double-exponential expected time. Moreover, the member strings are acce…
A book about turning high-degree optimization problems into quadratic optimization problems that maintain the same global minimum (ground state). This book explores quadratizations for pseudo-Boolean optimization, perturbative gadgets used in QMA completeness theorems, and also non-perturbative k-local to 2-local transformations used for quantum mechanics, quantum annealing and universal adiabatic quantum computing. The book contains ~70 different Hamiltonian transformations, each of them on a separate page, where the cost (in number of auxiliary binary variables or auxiliary qubits, or number…
