The relationship between BQP and PH has been an open problem since the earliest days of quantum computing. We present evidence that quantum computers can solve problems outside the entire polynomial hierarchy, by relating this question to topics in circuit complexity, pseudorandomness, and Fourier analysis.
First, we show that there exists an oracle relation problem (i.e., a problem with many valid outputs) that is solvable in BQP, but not in PH. This also yields a non-oracle relation problem that is solvable in quantum logarithmic time, but not in AC0.
Second, we show that an oracle decision problem separating BQP from PH would follow from the Generalized Linial-Nisan Conjecture, which we formulate here and which is likely of independent interest. The original Linial-Nisan Conjecture (about pseudorandomness against constant-depth circuits) was recently proved by Braverman, after being open for twenty years.
We use the powerful tools of counting complexity and generic oracles to help understand the limitations of the complexity of quantum computation. We show several results for the probabilistic quantum class BQP. 1. BQP is low for PP, i.e., PP^BQP=PP. 2. There exists a relativized world where P=BQP and the polynomial-time hierarchy is infinite. 3. There exists a relativized world where BQP does not have complete sets. 4. There exists a relativized world where P=BQP but P is not equal to UP intersect coUP and one-way functions exist. This gives a relativized answer to an open question of Simon.
We initiate the study of the relationship between two complexity classes, BQP (Bounded-Error Quantum Polynomial-Time) and PPAD (Polynomial Parity Argument, Directed). We first give a conjecture that PPAD is contained in BQP, and show a necessary and sufficient condition for the conjecture to hold. Then we prove that the conjecture is not true under the oracle model. In the end, we raise some interesting open problems/future directions.
A celebrated important result due to Freedman, Larsen and Wang states that providing additive approximations of the Jones polynomial at the k'th root of unity, for constant k=5 and k>6, is BQP-hard. Together with the algorithmic results of Freedman et al and Aharonov et al, this gives perhaps the most natural BQP-complete problem known today and motivates further study of the topic. In this paper we focus on the universality proof; we extend the universality result of Freedman et al to k's that grow polynomially with the number of strands and crossings in the link, thus extending the BQP-hardn…
Quantum computers are widely believed have an advantage over classical computers, and some have even published some empirical evidence that this is the case. However, these publications do not include a rigorous proof of this advantage, which would have to minimally state that the class of problems decidable by a quantum computer in polynomial time, BQP, contains problems that are not in the class of problems decidable by a classical computer with similar time bounds, P. Here, I provide the proof of a stronger result that implies this result: BQP contains problems that lie beyond the much larg…
If one modifies the laws of Quantum Mechanics to allow nonlinear evolution of quantum states, this paper shows that NP-complete problems would be efficiently solvable in polynomial time with bounded probability (NP in BQP). With that (admittedly very unlikely) assumption, this is demonstrated by describing a polynomially large network of quantum gates that solves the 3SAT problem with bounded probability in polynomial time. As in a previous paper by Abrams and Lloyd (but by a somewhat simpler argument), allowing nonlinearity in the laws of Quantum Mechanics would prove the "weak Church-Turing …
We explore the space "just above" BQP by defining a complexity class PDQP (Product Dynamical Quantum Polynomial time) which is larger than BQP but does not contain NP relative to an oracle. The class is defined by imagining that quantum computers can perform measurements that do not collapse the wavefunction. This (non-physical) model of computation can efficiently solve problems such as Graph Isomorphism and Approximate Shortest Vector which are believed to be intractable for quantum computers. Furthermore, it can search an unstructured N-element list in $\tilde O$(N^{1/3}) time, but no faste…
Recent work has shown that quantum computers can compute scattering probabilities in massive quantum field theories, with a run time that is polynomial in the number of particles, their energy, and the desired precision. Here we study a closely related quantum field-theoretical problem: estimating the vacuum-to-vacuum transition amplitude, in the presence of spacetime-dependent classical sources, for a massive scalar field theory in (1+1) dimensions. We show that this problem is BQP-hard; in other words, its solution enables one to solve any problem that is solvable in polynomial time by a qua…
There's something really strange about quantum mechanics. It's not just that cats can be dead and alive at the same time, and that entanglement seems to violate the principle of locality; quantum mechanics seems to be what Aaronson calls "an island in theoryspace", because even slight perturbations to the theory of quantum mechanics seem to generate absurdities. In [Aar 04] and [Aar 05], he explores these perturbations and the corresponding absurdities in the context of computation. In particular, he shows that a quantum theory where the measurement probabilities are computed using p-norm inst…
A central problem in quantum computing is to identify computational tasks which can be solved substantially faster on a quantum computer than on any classical computer. By studying the hardest such tasks, known as BQP-complete problems, we deepen our understanding of the power and limitations of quantum computers. We present several BQP-complete problems, including Local Hamiltonian Eigenvalue Sampling and Phase Estimation Sampling. Different than the previous known BQP-complete problems (the Quadratically Signed Weight Enumerator problem [KL01] and the Approximation of Jones Polynomials [FKW0…
Using the measurement-based quantum computation model, we construct interactive proofs with non-communicating quantum provers and a classical verifier. Our construction gives interactive proofs for all languages in BQP with a polynomial number of quantum provers, each of which, in the honest case, performs only a single measurement. Our techniques use self-tested graph states. In this regard we introduce two important improvements over previous work. Specifically, we derive new error bounds which scale polynomially with the size of the graph compared with exponential dependence on the size of …
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 conj…
We study the relationship between problems solvable by quantum algorithms in polynomial time and those for which zero-knowledge proofs exist. In prior work, Aaronson [arxiv:quant-ph/0111102] showed an oracle separation between BQP and SZK, i.e. an oracle $A$ such that $\mathrm{SZK}^A \not\subseteq \mathrm{BQP}^A$. In this paper we give a simple extension of Aaronson's result to non-interactive zero-knowledge proofs with perfect security. This class, NIPZK, is the most restrictive zero-knowledge class. We show that even for this class we can construct an $A$ with $\mathrm{NIPZK}^A \not\subseteq…
Using the measurement-based quantum computation model, we construct interactive proofs with non-communicating quantum provers and a classical verifier. Our construction gives interactive proofs for all languages in BQP with a polynomial number of quantum provers, each of which, in the honest case, performs only a single measurement. Our techniques use self-tested graph states which allow us to test the provers for honesty, establishing that they hold onto a particular graph state and measure it in specified bases. In this extended abstract we give an overview of the construction and proofs.
In our thesis, we try to shed more light onto the complexity of quantum complexity classes by refining the related part of the hierarchy. First, we review the basic concepts of quantum computing in general. Then, inspired by BQP, we define new complexity classes. They are placed between BPP and PSPACE. We show that they incorporate the current important quantum algorithms. Furthermore, the importance of the unitarity constraint given by quantum mechanics is revealed. Without this requirement, we naturally arrive at the class AWPP, which was up to now thought to be just an artificially defined …
We prove that quantum computation is polynomially equivalent to classical probabilistic computation with an oracle for estimating the value of simple sums, quadratically signed weight enumerators. The problem of estimating these sums can be cast in terms of promise problems and has two interesting variants. An oracle for the unconstrained variant may be more powerful than quantum computation, while an oracle for a more constrained variant is efficiently solvable in the one-bit model of quantum computation. Thus, problems involving estimation of quadratically signed weight enumerators yield pro…
No Size-Preserving Amplification with Quantum Advice
National Taiwan University（台湾大学）；National Tsing Hua University. National Center for Excellence in Quantum Information Science and Engineering.（国立清华大学。量子资讯科学与工程卓越中心）
In this work, we present a multi-layer quantum search method that generates an exponential speedup of the standard Grover's algorithm. As direct applications, any NP problems can be solved efficiently on a quantum circuit with only polynomial gate complexity. In particular, such multi-layer search can solve the factoring problem with an exponential speedup, providing an alternative to Shor's algorithm. Our results show that the exponential speedup of quantum circuits is ubiquitous, and Grover's search is much more powerful than that has been demonstrated. With no contradiction to the quadratic…
Although a quantum state requires exponentially many classical bits to describe, the laws of quantum mechanics impose severe restrictions on how that state can be accessed. This paper shows in three settings that quantum messages have only limited advantages over classical ones. First, we show that $\mathsf{BQP/qpoly}\subseteq\mathsf{PP/poly}$, where $\mathsf{BQP/qpoly}$ is the class of problems solvable in quantum polynomial time, given a polynomial-size "quantum advice state" that depends only on the input length. This resolves a question of Buhrman, and means that we should not hope for an …
We introduce a simple sub-universal quantum computing model, which we call the Hadamard-classical circuit with one-qubit (HC1Q) model. It consists of a classical reversible circuit sandwiched by two layers of Hadamard gates, and therefore it is in the second level of the Fourier hierarchy. We show that output probability distributions of the HC1Q model cannot be classically efficiently sampled within a multiplicative error unless the polynomial-time hierarchy collapses to the second level. The proof technique is different from those used for previous sub-universal models, such as IQP, Boson Sa…
A conjecture of Jozsa (arXiv:quant-ph/0508124) states that any polynomial-time quantum computation can be simulated by polylogarithmic-depth quantum computation interleaved with polynomial-depth classical computation. Separately, Aaronson conjectured that there exists an oracle $\mathcal{O}$ such that $\textrm{BQP}^{\mathcal{O}} \neq (\textrm{BPP}^\textrm{BQNC})^{\mathcal{O}}$. These conjectures are intriguing allusions to the unresolved potential of combining classical and low-depth quantum computation. In this work we show that the Welded Tree Problem, which is an oracle problem that can be …
University of Copenhagen（哥本哈根大学）；MIT（麻省理工学院）；University of Southern California（南加州大学）；Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München（慕尼黑大学）；Munich Center for Quantum Science and Technology (MCQST)（慕尼黑量子科学与技术中心）；Korteweg-de Vries Institute for Mathematics & QuSoft, University of Amsterdam（阿姆斯特丹大学科特维格-德弗里斯数学研究所与QuSoft）
I offer a case that quantum query complexity still has loads of enticing and fundamental open problems -- from relativized QMA versus QCMA and BQP versus IP, to time/space tradeoffs for collision and element distinctness, to polynomial degree versus quantum query complexity for partial functions, to the Unitary Synthesis Problem and more.
This paper introduces a new technique for removing existential quantifiers over quantum states. Using this technique, we show that there is no way to pack an exponential number of bits into a polynomial-size quantum state, in such a way that the value of any one of those bits can later be proven with the help of a polynomial-size quantum witness. We also show that any problem in QMA with polynomial-size quantum advice, is also in PSPACE with polynomial-size classical advice. This builds on our earlier result that BQP/qpoly is contained in PP/poly, and offers an intriguing counterpoint to the r…
The Jones polynomial, discovered in 1984, is an important knot invariant in topology. Among its many connections to various mathematical and physical areas, it is known (due to Witten) to be intimately connected to Topological Quantum Field Theory (TQFT). The works of Freedman, Kitaev, Larsen and Wang provide an efficient simulation of TQFT by a quantum computer, and vice versa. These results implicitly imply the existence of an efficient quantum algorithm that provides a certain additive approximation of the Jones polynomial at the fifth root of unity, e^{2πi/5}, and moreover, that this probl…
In order to establish the computational equivalence between quantum Turing machines (QTMs) and quantum circuit families (QCFs) using Yao's quantum circuit simulation of QTMs, we previously introduced the class of uniform QCFs based on an infinite set of elementary gates, which has been shown to be computationally equivalent to the polynomial-time QTMs (with appropriate restriction of amplitudes) up to bounded error simulation. This result implies that the complexity class BQP introduced by Bernstein and Vazirani for QTMs equals its counterpart for uniform QCFs. However, the complexity classes …
The widely held belief that BQP strictly contains BPP raises fundamental questions: if we cannot efficiently compute predictions for the behavior of quantum systems, how can we test their behavior? In other words, is quantum mechanics falsifiable? In cryptographic settings, how can a customer of a future untrusted quantum computing company be convinced of the correctness of its quantum computations? To provide answers to these questions, we define Quantum Prover Interactive Proofs (QPIP). Whereas in standard interactive proofs the prover is computationally unbounded, here our prover is in BQP,…
University of British Columbia（不列颠哥伦比亚大学）；Technische Universität Darmstadt（达姆施塔特工业大学）；Stewart Blusson Quantum Matter Institute（斯图尔特·布吕松量子物质研究所）
Machine learning is considered to be one of the most promising applications of quantum computing. Therefore, the search for quantum advantage of the quantum analogues of machine learning models is a key research goal. Here, we show that variational quantum classifiers and support vector machines with quantum kernels can solve a classification problem based on the $k$-Forrelation problem, which is known to be PromiseBQP-complete. Because the PromiseBQP complexity class includes all Bounded-Error Quantum Polynomial-Time (BQP) decision problems, our results imply that there exists a feature map a…
We construct a classically verifiable succinct interactive argument for quantum computation (BQP) with communication complexity and verifier runtime that are poly-logarithmic in the runtime of the BQP computation (and polynomial in the security parameter). Our protocol is secure assuming the post-quantum security of indistinguishability obfuscation (iO) and Learning with Errors (LWE). This is the first succinct argument for quantum computation in the plain model; prior work (Chia-Chung-Yamakawa, TCC '20) requires both a long common reference string and non-black-box use of a hash function mode…
The recent paper [F. Arute et al. Nature {\bf 574}, 505 (2019)] considered exact classical sampling of the output probability distribution of the globally depolarized random quantum circuit. In this paper, we show three results. First, we consider the case when the fidelity $F$ is constant. We show that if the distribution is classically sampled in polynomial time within a constant multiplicative error, then ${\rm BQP}\subseteq{\rm SBP}$, which means that BQP is in the second level of the polynomial-time hierarchy. We next show that for any $F\le1/2$, the distribution is classically trivially …
The classical channel remote state preparation (ccRSP) is an important two-party primitive in quantum cryptography. Alice (classical polynomial-time) and Bob (quantum polynomial-time) exchange polynomial rounds of classical messages, and Bob finally gets random single-qubit states while Alice finally gets classical descriptions of the states. In [T. Morimae, arXiv:2003.10712], an information-theoretically-sound non-interactive protocol for the verification of quantum computing was proposed. The verifier of the protocol is classical, but the trusted center is assumed that sends random single-qu…
We reveal a natural algebraic problem whose complexity appears to interpolate between the well-known complexity classes BQP and NP: (*) Decide whether a univariate polynomial with exactly m monomial terms has a p-adic rational root. In particular, we show that while (*) is doable in quantum randomized polynomial time when m=2 (and no classical randomized polynomial time algorithm is known), (*) is nearly NP-hard for general m: Under a plausible hypothesis involving primes in arithmetic progression (implied by the Generalized Riemann Hypothesis for certain cyclotomic fields), a randomized polyn…
In a recent breakthrough, Mahadev constructed a classical verification of quantum computation (CVQC) protocol for a classical client to delegate decision problems in BQP to an untrusted quantum prover under computational assumptions. In this work, we explore further the feasibility of CVQC with the more general sampling problems in BQP and with the desirable blindness property. We contribute affirmative solutions to both as follows. (1) Motivated by the sampling nature of many quantum applications (e.g., quantum algorithms for machine learning and quantum supremacy tasks), we initiate the stud…
We consider the problem of maximizing a homogeneous polynomial on the unit sphere and its hierarchy of Sum-of-Squares (SOS) relaxations. Exploiting the polynomial kernel technique, we obtain a quadratic improvement of the known convergence rate by Reznick and Doherty & Wehner. Specifically, we show that the rate of convergence is no worse than $O(d^2/\ell^2)$ in the regime $\ell \geq Ω(d)$ where $\ell$ is the level of the hierarchy and $d$ the dimension, solving a problem left open in the recent paper by de Klerk & Laurent (arXiv:1904.08828). Importantly, our analysis also works for matrix-val…
The aim of the paper is to propose a bounded-error quantum polynomial time (BQP) algorithm for the max-bisection and the min-bisection problems. The max-bisection and the min-bisection problems are fundamental NP-hard problems. Given a graph with even number of vertices, the aim of the max-bisection problem is to divide the vertices into two subsets of the same size to maximize the number of edges between the two subsets, while the aim of the min-bisection problem is to minimize the number of edges between the two subsets. The proposed algorithm runs in $O(m^2)$ for a graph with $m$ edges and …
The widely held belief that BQP strictly contains BPP raises fundamental questions: Upcoming generations of quantum computers might already be too large to be simulated classically. Is it possible to experimentally test that these systems perform as they should, if we cannot efficiently compute predictions for their behavior? Vazirani has asked: If predicting Quantum Mechanical systems requires exponential resources, is QM a falsifiable theory? In cryptographic settings, an untrusted future company wants to sell a quantum computer or perform a delegated quantum computation. Can the customer be…
It is shown that determining whether a quantum computation has a non-zero probability of accepting is at least as hard as the polynomial time hierarchy. This hardness result also applies to determining in general whether a given quantum basis state appears with nonzero amplitude in a superposition, or whether a given quantum bit has positive expectation value at the end of a quantum computation. This result is achieved by showing that the complexity class NQP of Adleman, Demarrais, and Huang, a quantum analog of NP, is equal to the counting class coC$_=$P.
