We investigate the complexity of sorting in the model of sequential quantum circuits. While it is known that in general a quantum algorithm based on comparisons alone cannot outperform classical sorting algorithms by more than a constant factor in time complexity, this is wrong in a space bounded setting. We observe that for all storage bounds n/\log n\ge S\ge \log^3 n, one can devise a quantum algorithm that sorts n numbers (using comparisons only) in time T=O(n^{3/2}\log^{3/2} n/\sqrt S). We then show the following lower bound on the time-space tradeoff for sorting $n$ numbers from a polynomial size range in a general sorting algorithm (not necessarily based on comparisons): TS=Ω(n^{3/2}). Hence for small values of S the upper bound is almost tight. Classically the time-space tradeoff for sorting is TS=Θ(n^2).
A strong direct product theorem says that if we want to compute k independent instances of a function, using less than k times the resources needed for one instance, then our overall success probability will be exponentially small in k. We establish such theorems for the classical as well as quantum query complexity of the OR function. This implies slightly weaker direct product results for all total functions. We prove a similar result for quantum communication protocols computing k instances of the Disjointness function. Our direct product theorems imply a time-space tradeoff T^2*S=Omega(N^3…
Algorithms for searching and sorting data sets on quantum annealing systems are presented. Search algorithms for unordered data sets are developed. A sorting algorithm for data sets is provided, with a consideration of sort stability. Scalability of the algorithms, considering both the number of qubits required and the qubit connectivity, is characterized as a function of problem size.
The canonical Schmidt decomposition of quantum states is discussed and its implementation to the Quantum Computation Simulator is outlined. In particular, the semiorder relation in the space of quantum states induced by the lexicographic semiorder of the space of the Schmidt coefficients is discussed. The appropriate sorting algorithms on the corresponding POSETs consisting from quantum states are formulated and theirs computer implementations are being tested.
We analyze the quantum query complexity of sorting under partial information. In this problem, we are given a partially ordered set $P$ and are asked to identify a linear extension of $P$ using pairwise comparisons. For the standard sorting problem, in which $P$ is empty, it is known that the quantum query complexity is not asymptotically smaller than the classical information-theoretic lower bound. We prove that this holds for a wide class of partially ordered sets, thereby improving on a result from Yao (STOC'04).
Is there any point of principle that prohibits us from doing one or more forms of quantum information processing? It is now well known that an unknown quantum state can neither be copied nor deleted perfectly. Given a set of states which are not necessarily orthogonal, is it possible to compare any two states from the set, given some reasonable ordering of such states? Is it possible to sort them in some specific order? In the context of quantum computation, it is shown here that there is no quantum circuit implementing a unitary transformation, for comparing and sorting an unrestricted set of…
We prove that Ω(n log(n)) comparisons are necessary for any quantum algorithm that sorts n numbers with high success probability and uses only comparisons. If no error is allowed, at least 0.110nlog_2(n) - 0.067n + O(1) comparisons must be made. The previous known lower bound is Ω(n).
Sorting is a fundamental computational process, which facilitates subsequent searching of a database. It can be thought of as factorisation of the search process. The location of a desired item in a sorted database can be found by classical queries that inspect one letter of the label at a time. For an unsorted database, no such classical quick search algorithm is available. If the database permits quantum queries, however, then mere digitisation is sufficient for efficient search. Sorting becomes redundant with the quantum superposition of states. A quantum algorithm is written down which loc…
Long-distance quantum communication relies on storing and retrieving photonic qubits in orthogonal field modes. The available degrees of freedom for photons are polarization, spatial-mode profile, and temporal/spectral profile. To date, methods exist for decomposing, manipulating, and analyzing photons into orthogonal polarization modes and spatial modes. Here we propose and theoretically verify the first highly efficient method to carry out analogous operations for temporally and spectrally overlapping, but field-orthogonal, temporal modes. The method relies on cascaded nonlinear-optical quan…
In this work we introduce a quantum sorting algorithm with adaptable requirements of memory and circuit depth, and then use it to develop a new quantum version of the classical machine learning algorithm known as k-nearest neighbors (k-NN). Both the efficiency and performance of this new quantum version of the k-NN algorithm are compared to those of the classical k-NN and another quantum version proposed by Schuld et al. \cite{Int13}. Results show that the efficiency of both quantum algorithms is similar to each other and superior to that of the classical algorithm. On the other hand, the perf…
Quantum sorter has gained a lot of attention during the last years due to its wide application in quantum information processing and quantum technologies. A challenging task is the construction of a quantum sorter, which collect many high-dimensional quantum systems, which are simultaneously incident on different input ports of the device. In this paper we give the definition of the general quantum sorter of multi-level quantum systems. We prove the impossibility of the construction of the perfect quantum sorter, which works for many particles incident on any input port, while keeping their st…
We consider the quantum complexities of the following three problems: searching an ordered list, sorting an un-ordered list, and deciding whether the numbers in a list are all distinct. Letting N be the number of elements in the input list, we prove a lower bound of \frac{1}π(\ln(N)-1) accesses to the list elements for ordered searching, a lower bound of Ω(N\log{N}) binary comparisons for sorting, and a lower bound of Ω(\sqrt{N}\log{N}) binary comparisons for element distinctness. The previously best known lower bounds are {1/12}\log_2(N) - O(1) due to Ambainis, Ω(N), and Ω(\sqrt{N}), respecti…
All classical and quantum technologies that encode in and retrieve information from optical fields rely on the ability to selectively manipulate orthogonal field modes of light. Such manipulation can be achieved with high selectivity for polarization modes and transverse-spatial modes. For the time-frequency degree of freedom, this could efficiently be achieved for a limited choice of approximately orthogonal modes, i.e. non-overlapping bins in time or frequency. We recently proposed a method that surmounts the selectivity barrier for sorting arbitrary orthogonal temporal modes [Opt. Lett. {\b…
Although the strengths of optical non-linearities available experimentally have been rapidly increasing in recent years, significant challenges remain to using such non-linearities to produce useful quantum devices such as efficient optical Bell state analysers or universal quantum optical gates. Here we describe a new approach that avoids the current limitations by combining strong non-linearities with active Gaussian operations in efficient protocols for Bell state analysers and Controlled-Sign gates.
Analyses based on quantum metrology have shown that the ability to localize the positions of two incoherent point sources can be significantly enhanced through the use of mode sorting. Here we theoretically and experimentally investigate the effect of partial coherence on the sub-diffraction limit localization of two sources based on parity sorting. With the prior information of a negative and real-valued degree of coherence, higher Fisher information is obtained than that for the incoherent case. Our results pave the way to clarifying the role of coherence in quantum limited metrology.
Measuring the state of a quantum system is a fundamental process in quantum mechanics and plays an essential role in quantum information and quantum technologies. One method to measure a quantum observable is to sort the system in different spatial modes according to the measured value, followed by single-particle detectors on each mode. Examples of quantum sorters are polarizing beam-splitters (PBS) -- which direct photons according to their polarization -- and Stern-Gerlach devices. Here we propose a general scheme to sort a quantum system according to the value of any $d$-dimensional degree…
We derive lower bounds for tradeoffs between the communication C and space S for communicating circuits. The first such bound applies to quantum circuits. If for any function f with image Z the multicolor discrepancy of the communication matrix of f is 1/2^d, then any bounded error quantum protocol with space S, in which Alice receives some l inputs, Bob r inputs, and they compute f(x_i,y_j) for the lr pairs of inputs (x_i,y_j) needs communication C=Ω(lrd \log |Z|/S). In particular, n\times n-matrix multiplication over a finite field F requires C=Θ(n^3\log^2 |F|/S). We then turn to randomized …
University of Bonn（波恩大学）；Fraunhofer IAIS（弗劳恩霍夫智能分析与信息系统研究所）
We show that the fundamental tasks of sorting lists and building search trees or heaps can be modeled as quadratic unconstrained binary optimization problems (QUBOs). The idea is to understand these tasks as permutation problems and to devise QUBOs whose solutions represent appropriate permutation matrices. We discuss how to construct such QUBOs and how to solve them using Hopfield nets or adiabatic) quantum computing. In short, we show that neurocomputing methods or quantum computers can solve problems usually associated with abstract data structures.
The Laguerre-Gaussian (LG) modes constitute a complete basis set for representing the transverse structure of a {paraxial} photon field in free space. Earlier workers have shown how to construct a device for sorting a photon according to its azimuthal LG mode index, which describes the orbital angular momentum (OAM) carried by the field. In this paper we propose and demonstrate a mode sorter based on the fractional Fourier transform (FRFT) to efficiently decompose the optical field according to its radial profile. We experimentally characterize the performance of our implementation by separati…
We present probability-fidelity tradeoffs for a varying quantum operation with fixed input-output states and for a varying inversion of a fixed quantum operation.
Single photons with orbital angular momentum (OAM) have attracted substantial attention from researchers. A single photon can carry infinite OAM values theoretically. Thus, OAM photon states have been widely used in quantum information and fundamental quantum mechanics. Although there have been many methods for sorting quantum states with different OAM values, the nondestructive and efficient sorter of high-dimensional OAM remains a fundamental challenge. Here, we propose a scalable OAM sorter which can categorize different OAM states simultaneously, meanwhile, preserving both OAM and spin ang…
For any function $f: X \times Y \to Z$, we prove that $Q^{*\text{cc}}(f) \cdot Q^{\text{OIP}}(f) \cdot (\log Q^{\text{OIP}}(f) + \log |Z|) \geq Ω(\log |X|)$. Here, $Q^{*\text{cc}}(f)$ denotes the bounded-error communication complexity of $f$ using an entanglement-assisted two-way qubit channel, and $Q^{\text{OIP}}(f)$ denotes the number of quantum queries needed to learn $x$ with high probability given oracle access to the function $f_x(y) \stackrel{\text{def}}{=} f(x, y)$. We show that this tradeoff is close to the best possible. We also give a generalization of this tradeoff for distribution…
The uncertainty principle is often interpreted by the tradeoff between the error of a measurement and the consequential disturbance to the followed ones, which originated long ago from Heisenberg himself but now falls into reexamination and even heated debate. Here we show that the tradeoff is switched on or off by the quantum uncertainties of two involved non-commuting observables: if one is more certain than the other, there is no tradeoff; otherwise, they do have tradeoff and the Jensen-Shannon divergence gives it a good characterization.
When discriminating between two pure quantum states, there exists a quantitative tradeoff between the information retrieved by the measurement and the disturbance caused on the unknown state. We derive the optimal tradeoff and provide the corresponding quantum measurement. Such an optimal measurement smoothly interpolates between the two limiting cases of maximal information extraction and no measurement at all.
We give a new version of the adversary method for proving lower bounds on quantum query algorithms. The new method is based on analyzing the eigenspace structure of the problem at hand. We use it to prove a new and optimal strong direct product theorem for 2-sided error quantum algorithms computing k independent instances of a symmetric Boolean function: if the algorithm uses significantly less than k times the number of queries needed for one instance of the function, then its success probability is exponentially small in k. We also use the polynomial method to prove a direct product theorem …
We provide a general framework for quantifying the optimal tradeoff between the information retrieved by a quantum measurement and the disturbance on the quantum state in covariant quantum state estimation.
We present a simple information-disturbance tradeoff relation valid for any general measurement apparatus: The disturbance between input and output states is lower bounded by the information the apparatus provides in distinguishing these two states.
We study algorithms for solving three problems on strings. The first one is the Most Frequently String Search Problem. The problem is the following. Assume that we have a sequence of $n$ strings of length $k$. The problem is finding the string that occurs in the sequence most often. We propose a quantum algorithm that has a query complexity $\tilde{O}(n \sqrt{k})$. This algorithm shows speed-up comparing with the deterministic algorithm that requires $Ω(nk)$ queries. The second one is searching intersection of two sequences of strings. All strings have the same length $k$. The size of the firs…
We show that the global balance of information dynamics for general quantum measurements given in [F. Buscemi, M. Hayashi, and M. Horodecki, Phys.Rev.Lett. 100, 210504 (2008)] makes it possible to unify various and generally inequivalent approaches adopted in order to derive information-disturbance tradeoffs in quantum theory. We focus in particular on those tradeoffs, constituting the vast majority of the literature on the subject, where disturbance is defined either in terms of average output fidelity or of entanglement fidelity.
Sorting quantum fields into different modes according to their Fock-space quantum numbers is a highly desirable quantum operation. In this Letter, we show that a pair of two-level emitters, chirally coupled to a waveguide, may scatter single- and two-photon components of an input pulse into orthogonal temporal modes with a fidelity $\gtrsim 0.9997$. We develop a general theory to characterize and optimize this process and observe an interesting dynamics in the two-photon scattering regime: while the first emitter gives rise to a complex multimode field, the second emitter recombines the field …
We demonstrate a fundamental principle of disturbance tradeoff for quantum measurements, along the lines of the celebrated uncertainty principle: The disturbances associated with measurements performed on distinct yet identically prepared ensembles of systems in a pure state cannot all be made arbitrarily small. Indeed, we show that the average of the disturbances associated with a set of projective measurements is strictly greater than zero whenever the associated observables do not have a common eigenvector. For such measurements, we show an equivalence between disturbance tradeoff measured …
We consider measurement disturbance tradeoffs in quantum machine learning protocols which seek to learn about quantum data. We study the simplest example of a binary classification task, in the unsupervised regime. Specifically, we investigate how a classification of two qubits, that can each be in one of two unknown states, affects our ability to perform a subsequent classification on three qubits when a third is added. Surprisingly, we find a range of strategies in which a non-trivial first classification does not affect the success rate of the second classification. There is, however, a non…
General tradeoff relations present in nonlocal correlations of bipartite systems are studied, regardless of any specific quantum states and measuring directions. Extensions to multipartite scenarios are possible and very promising. Tsirelson's bound can be derived out in particular. The close connection with uncertainty relations is also presented and discussed.
For sending unknown direction information, antiparallel spins contains more direction information than parallel spins(Gisin and Popescu, 1999, \textit{Phys. Rev. Lett.} 83, 432).In this paper, the optimal information-disturbance tradeoff bound for antiparallel spins is derived. The quantum measurements which attain the optimal tradeoff bound are obtained. This result can be of practical relevance for posing some general limits on Eve's eavesdropping process. Finally, we also present a comparison between the bound for antiparallel spins and the bound for parallel spins.
I construct a secure multi-party scheme to compute a classical function by a succinct use of a specially designed fault-tolerant random polynomial quantum error correction code. This scheme is secure provided that (asymptotically) strictly greater than five-sixths of the players are honest. Moreover, the security of this scheme follows directly from the theory of quantum error correcting code, and hence is valid without any computational assumption. I also discuss the quantum-classical complexity-security tradeoff in secure multi-party computation schemes and argue why a full-blown quantum cod…
We ask whether there are fundamental limits on storing quantum information reliably in a bounded volume of space. To investigate this question, we study quantum error correcting codes specified by geometrically local commuting constraints on a 2D lattice of finite-dimensional quantum particles. For these 2D systems, we derive a tradeoff between the number of encoded qubits k, the distance of the code d, and the number of particles n. It is shown that kd^2=O(n) where the coefficient in O(n) depends only on the locality of the constraints and dimension of the Hilbert spaces describing individual…
Recent work considered the ultimate (quantum) limit of the precision of estimating the distance between two point objects. It was shown that the performance gap between the quantum limit and that of ideal continuum image-plane direct detection is the largest for highly sub-Rayleigh separation of the objects, and that a pre-detection mode sorting could attain the quantum limit. Here we extend this to a more general problem of estimating the length of an incoherently radiating extended (line) object. We find, as expected by the Rayleigh criterion, the Fisher information (FI) per integrated photo…
Experimentally realized local-global tradeoff in quantum resources
Ningbo University（宁波大学）；Suzhou City University（苏州城市学院）；Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics（南京航空航天大学）；The Chinese University of Hong Kong（香港中文大学）
When we extract information from a system by performing a quantum measurement, the state of the system is disturbed due to the backaction of the measurement. Numerous studies have been performed to quantitatively formulate tradeoff relations between information and disturbance. We formulate a tradeoff relation between information and disturbance from an estimation-theoretic point of view, and derive an inequality between them. The information is defined as the classical Fisher information obtained by the measurement, and the disturbance is defined as the average loss of the quantum Fisher info…
We address the problem of energy-error tradeoff in the discrimination between two linear passive quantum optical devices with a single use. We provide an analytical derivation of the optimal strategy for beamsplitters and an iterative algorithm converging to the optimum in the general case. We then compare the optimal strategy with a simpler strategy using coherent input states and homodyne detection. It turns out that the former requires much less energy in order to achieve the same performances.
Tight tradeoff relation and optimal measurement for multiparameter quantum estimation
The Chinese University of Hong Kong（香港中文大学）；The Hong Kong Institute of Quantum Information Science and Technology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong（香港中文大学香港量子信息科学与技术研究所）；State Key Laboratory of Quantum Information Technologies and Materials, The Chinese University of Hong Kong（香港中文大学量子信息技术与材料国家重点实验室）；Shenzhen University（深圳大学）
We propose a method of optimally controlling state transfer through a noisy quantum channel (spin-chain). This process is treated as qubit state-transfer through a fermionic bath. We show that dynamical modulation of the boundary-qubits levels suffices to ensure fast and high-fidelity state transfer. This is achievable by dynamically optimizing the transmission spectrum of the channel. The resulting optimal control is robust against both static and fluctuating noise.
Qubit loss and gate failure are significant problems for the development of scalable quantum computing. Recently various schemes have been proposed for tolerating qubit loss and gate failure. These include schemes based on cluster and parity states. We show that by designing such schemes specifically to tolerate these error types we cause an exponential blow-out in depolarizing noise. We discuss several examples and propose techniques for minimizing this problem. In general this introduces a tradeoff with other undesirable effects. In some cases this is physical resource requirements, while in…
We propose an approach for quantifying a quantum circuit's quantumness as a means to understand the nature of quantum algorithmic speedups. Since quantum gates that do not preserve the computational basis are necessary for achieving quantum speedups, it appears natural to define the quantumness of a quantum circuit using the number of such gates. Intuitively, a reduction in the quantumness requires an increase in the amount of classical computation, hence giving a ``quantum and classical tradeoff''. In this paper we present two results on this direction. The first gives an asymptotic answer to…
The need to increase data transfer rates constitutes a key challenge in modern information-driven societies. Taking advantage of the transverse spatial modes of light to encode more information is a promising avenue for both classical and quantum photonics. However, to ease access to the encoded information, it is essential to be able to sort spatial modes into different output channels. Here, we introduce a novel way to customize the sorting of arbitrary spatial light modes. Our method relies on the high degree of control over random scattering processes by preshaping of the phase structure o…
One of the characteristic features of quantum mechanics is that every measurement that extracts information about a general quantum system necessarily causes an unavoidable disturbance to the state of this system. A plethora of different approaches has been developed to characterize and optimize this tradeoff. Here, we apply the framework of quantum instruments to investigate the optimal tradeoff and to derive a class of procedures that is optimal with respect to most meaningful measures. We focus our analysis on binary measurements on qubits as commonly used in communication and computation p…
Stinespring's dilation theorem is the basic structure theorem for quantum channels: it states that any quantum channel arises from a unitary evolution on a larger system. Here we prove a continuity theorem for Stinespring's dilation: if two quantum channels are close in cb-norm, then it is always possible to find unitary implementations which are close in operator norm, with dimension-independent bounds. This result generalizes Uhlmann's theorem from states to channels and allows to derive a formulation of the information-disturbance tradeoff in terms of quantum channels, as well as a continui…
