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arXiv:1601.01975

Quantum Merlin Arthur with Exponentially Small Gap

Bill Fefferman, Cedric Yen-Yu Lin

Published Jan 8, 2016• 12 citations
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Abstract

We study the complexity of QMA proof systems with inverse exponentially small promise gap. We show that this class can be exactly characterized by PSPACE, the class of problems solvable with a polynomial amount of memory. As applications we show that a "precise" version of the Local Hamiltonian problem is PSPACE-complete, and give a provable setting in which the ability to prepare PEPS states is not as powerful as the ability to prepare the ground state of general Local Hamiltonians.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.1601.01975

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We study the complexity of QMA proof systems with inverse exponentially small promise gap. We show that this class can be exactly characterized by PSPACE, the class of problems solvable with a polynomial amount of memory. As applications we show that a "precise" version of the Local Hamiltonian problem is PSPACE-complete, and give a provable setting in which the ability to prepare PEPS states is not as powerful as the ability to prepare the ground state of general Local Hamiltonians.
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 2k(n)×2k(n)2^{k(n)}\times 2^{k(n)}2k(n)×2k(n) matrix is complete for the class of problems solvable by quantum circuits acting on O(k(n))\mathcal{O}(k(n))O(k(n)) qubits with all measurements at the end of the computation. Similarly, estimating the minimum eigenvalue of an efficiently encoded Hermitian 2k(n)×2k(n)2^{k(n)}\times 2^{k(n)}2k(n)×2k(n) matrix is also complete for this class. In the logspace case, our results improve on previous results of Ta-Shma [STOC '13] by giving new space-efficient quantum algorithms that avoid intermediate measurements, as well as showing matching hardness results. Additionally, as a consequence we show that PreciseQMA, the version of QMA with exponentially small completeness-soundess gap, is equal to PSPACE. Thus, the problem of estimating the minimum eigenvalue of a local Hamiltonian to inverse exponential precision is PSPACE-complete, which we show holds even in the frustration-free case. Finally, we can use this characterization to give a provable setting in which the ability to prepare the ground state of a local Hamiltonian is more powerful than the ability to prepare PEPS states. Interestingly, by suitably changing the parameterization of either of these problems we can completely characterize the power of quantum computation with simultaneously bounded time and space.
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 single and multi-prover proof systems in the 'small-gap setting', under the assumption that EXP is not equal to NEXP. This implies, among others, the nonexistence of certain operators called disentanglers (defined by Aaronson et al. [arXiv:0804.0802]), with good approximation parameters. We also show that in this setting the proof system has the same expressive power if we restrict the verifier to be able to perform only Bell-measurements, i.e., using a BellQMA verifier. This is not known to hold in the usual setting, when the gap is bounded by an inverse-polynomial function of the input length. To show this we use the protocol of Chen and Drucker [arXiv:1011.0716]. The only caveat here is that we need at least a linear amount of proofs to achieve the power of NEXP, while in the previous setting two proofs were enough. We also study the case when the proof-lengths are only logarithmic in the input length and observe that in some cases the expressive power decreases. However, we show that it doesn't decrease further if we make the proof lengths to be even shorter.
We prove a deterministic exponential time upper bound for Quantum Merlin-Arthur games with k unentangled provers. This is the first non-trivial upper bound of QMA(k) better than NEXP and can be considered an exponential improvement, unless EXP=NEXP. The key ideas of our proof are to use perturbation theory to reduce the QMA(2)-complete Separable Sparse Hamiltonian problem to a variant of the Separable Local Hamiltonian problem with an exponentially small promise gap, and then to decide this instance using epsilon-net methods. Our results imply an exponential time algorithm for the Pure State N-Representability problem in quantum chemistry, which is in QMA(2), but is not known to be in QMA. We also discuss the implications of our results on the Best Separable State problem.
We study “Merlinized” versions of the recently defined Guided Local Hamiltonian problem, which we call “Guidable Local Hamiltonian” problems. Unlike their guided counterparts, these problems do not have a guiding state provided as a part of the input, but merely come with the promise that one exists. We consider in particular two classes of guiding states: those that can be prepared efficiently by a quantum circuit; and those belonging to a class of quantum states we call classically evaluatable, for which it is possible to efficiently compute expectation values of local observables classically. We show that guidable local Hamiltonian problems for both classes of guiding states are QCMA-complete in the inverse-polynomial precision setting, but lie within NP (or NqP) in the constant precision regime when the guiding state is classically evaluatable. Our completeness results show that, from a complexity-theoretic perspective, classical Ansätze selected by classical heuristics are just as powerful as quantum Ansätze prepared by quantum heuristics, as long as one has access to quantum phase estimation. In relation to the quantum PCP conjecture, we (i) define a complexity class capturing quantum-classical probabilistically checkable proof systems and show that it is contained in BQPNP[1] for constant proof queries; (ii) give a no-go result on “dequantizing” the known quantum reduction which maps a QPCP-verification circuit to a local Hamiltonian with constant promise gap; (iii) give several no-go results for the existence of quantum gap amplification procedures that preserve certain ground state properties; and (iv) propose two conjectures that can be viewed as stronger versions of the NLTS theorem. Finally, we show that many of our results can be directly modified to obtain similar results for the class MA.
We study 'Merlinized' versions of the recently defined Guided Local Hamiltonian problem, which we call 'Guidable Local Hamiltonian' problems. Unlike their guided counterparts, these problems do not have a guiding state provided as a part of the input, but merely come with the promise that one exists. We consider in particular two classes of guiding states: those that can be prepared efficiently by a quantum circuit; and those belonging to a class of quantum states we call classically evaluatable, for which it is possible to efficiently compute expectation values of local observables classically. We show that guidable local Hamiltonian problems for both classes of guiding states are QCMA\mathsf{QCMA}QCMA-complete in the inverse-polynomial precision setting, but lie within NP\mathsf{NP}NP (or NqP\mathsf{NqP}NqP) in the constant precision regime when the guiding state is classically evaluatable. Our completeness results show that, from a complexity-theoretic perspective, classical Ansätze selected by classical heuristics are just as powerful as quantum Ansätze prepared by quantum heuristics, as long as one has access to quantum phase estimation. In relation to the quantum PCP conjecture, we (i) define a complexity class capturing quantum-classical probabilistically checkable proof systems and show that it is contained in BQPNP[1]\mathsf{BQP}^{\mathsf{NP}[1]}BQPNP[1] for constant proof queries; (ii) give a no-go result on 'dequantizing' the known quantum reduction which maps a QPCP\mathsf{QPCP}QPCP-verification circuit to a local Hamiltonian with constant promise gap; (iii) give several no-go results for the existence of quantum gap amplification procedures that preserve certain ground state properties; and (iv) propose two conjectures that can be viewed as stronger versions of the NLTS theorem. Finally, we show that many of our results can be directly modified to obtain similar results for the class MA\mathsf{MA}MA.