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arXiv:1610.07244 · Physical Review A

Power of one nonclean qubit

Tomoyuki Morimae, Keisuke Fujii, Harumichi Nishimura

Published Apr 25, 2017• 15 citations
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Abstract

The one-clean qubit model (or the DQC1 model) is a restricted model of quantum computing where only a single qubit of the initial state is pure and others are maximally mixed. Although the model is not universal, it can efficiently solve several problems whose classical efficient solutions are not known. Furthermore, it was recently shown that if the one-clean qubit model is classically efficiently simulated, the polynomial hierarchy collapses to the second level. A disadvantage of the one-clean qubit model is, however, that the clean qubit is too clean: for example, in realistic NMR experiments, polarizations are not high enough to have the perfectly pure qubit. In this paper, we consider a more realistic one-clean qubit model, where the clean qubit is not clean, but depolarized. We first show that, for any polarization, a multiplicative-error calculation of the output probability distribution of the model is possible in a classical polynomial time if we take an appropriately large multiplicative error. The result is in strong contrast with that of the ideal one-clean qubit model where the classical efficient multiplicative-error calculation (or even the sampling) with the same amount of error causes the collapse of the polynomial hierarchy. We next show that, for any polarization lower-bounded by an inverse polynomial, a classical efficient sampling (in terms of a sufficiently small multiplicative error or an exponentially small additive error) of the output probability distribution of the model is impossible unless BQP (bounded error quantum polynomial time) is contained in the second level of the polynomial hierarchy, which suggests the hardness of the classical efficient simulation of the one nonclean qubit model.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.95.042336

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The one-clean qubit model (or the DQC1 model) is a restricted model of quantum computing where only a single qubit of the initial state is pure and others are maximally mixed. Although the model is not universal, it can efficiently solve several problems whose classical efficient solutions are not known. Furthermore, it was recently shown that if the one-clean qubit model is classically efficiently simulated, the polynomial hierarchy collapses to the second level. A disadvantage of the one-clean qubit model is, however, that the clean qubit is too clean: for example, in realistic NMR experiments, polarizations are not high enough to have the perfectly pure qubit. In this paper, we consider a more realistic one-clean qubit model, where the clean qubit is not clean, but depolarized. We first show that, for any polarization, a multiplicative-error calculation of the output probability distribution of the model is possible in a classical polynomial time if we take an appropriately large multiplicative error. The result is in strong contrast with that of the ideal one-clean qubit model where the classical efficient multiplicative-error calculation (or even the sampling) with the same amount of error causes the collapse of the polynomial hierarchy. We next show that, for any polarization lower-bounded by an inverse polynomial, a classical efficient sampling (in terms of a sufficiently small multiplicative error or an exponentially small additive error) of the output probability distribution of the model is impossible unless BQP (bounded error quantum polynomial time) is contained in the second level of the polynomial hierarchy, which suggests the hardness of the classical efficient simulation of the one nonclean qubit model.
The one-clean-qubit model (or the deterministic quantum computation with one quantum bit model) is a restricted model of quantum computing where all but a single input qubits are maximally mixed. It is known that the probability distribution of measurement results on three output qubits of the one-clean-qubit model cannot be classically efficiently sampled within a constant multiplicative error unless the polynomial-time hierarchy collapses to the third level [T. Morimae, K. Fujii, and J. F. Fitzsimons, Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 130502 (2014)PRLTAO0031-900710.1103/PhysRevLett.112.130502]. It was open whether we can keep the no-go result while reducing the number of output qubits from three to one. Here, we solve the open problem affirmatively. We also show that the third-level collapse of the polynomial-time hierarchy can be strengthened to the second-level one. The strengthening of the collapse level from the third to the second also holds for other subuniversal models such as the instantaneous quantum polynomial model [M. Bremner, R. Jozsa, and D. J. Shepherd, Proc. R. Soc. A 467, 459 (2011)PRLAAZ1364-502110.1098/rspa.2010.0301] and the boson sampling model [S. Aaronson and A. Arkhipov, STOC 2011, p. 333]. We additionally study the classical simulatability of the one-clean-qubit model with further restrictions on the circuit depth or the gate types.
The one-clean-qubit model (or the DQC1 model) is a restricted model of quantum computing where only a single input qubit is pure and all other input qubits are maximally mixed. In spite of the severe restriction, the model can solve several problems (such as calculating Jones polynomials) whose classical efficient solutions are not known. Furthermore, it was shown that if the output probability distribution of the one-clean-qubit model can be classically efficiently sampled with a constant multiplicative error, then the polynomial hierarchy collapses to the second level. Is it possible to improve the multiplicative error hardness result to a constant total variation distance error one like other subuniversal quantum computing models such as the IQP (Instantaneous Quantum Polynomial time) model, the boson sampling model, and the Fourier sampling model? In this paper we show that it is indeed possible if we accept a modified version of the average case hardness conjecture. Interestingly, the anticoncentration lemma can be easily shown by using the special property of the one-clean-qubit model that each output probability is so small that no concentration occurs.
Deterministic quantum computation with one quantum bit (DQC1) [E. Knill and R. Laflamme, Phys. Rev. Lett. 81, 5672 (1998)] is a model of quantum computing where the input is restricted to containing a single qubit in a pure state and has all other qubits in a completely mixed state. Only the single pure qubit is measured at the end of the computation. While it is known that DQC1 can efficiently solve several problems for which no known classical efficient algorithms exist, the question of whether DQC1 is really more powerful than classical computation remains open. In this Letter, we introduce a slightly modified version of DQC1, which we call DQC1(k), where k output qubits are measured, and show that DQC1(k) cannot be classically efficiently simulated for any k≥3 unless the polynomial hierarchy collapses at the third level.
Deterministic quantum computation with one quantum bit (DQC1), or the one clean qubit model, [E. Knill and R. Laflamme, Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf81}, 5672 (1998)] is a model of quantum computing where the input is the tensor product of a single pure qubit and many completely-mixed states, and only the single qubit is measured at the end of the computation. In spite of its naive appearance, the DQC1 model can efficiently solve some problems for which no classical efficient algorithms are known, and therefore it has been conjectured that the DQC1 model is more powerful than classical computing (under the assumption of $\mbox{BPP}\subsetneq\mbox{BQP}$). Here we show that the output probability distribution of the DQC1 model cannot be classically efficiently approximated (exactly within a polynomial bit length or in the fully polynomial randomized approximation scheme (FPRAS) with at most a constant error) unless $\mbox{BQP}\subseteq\mbox{BPP}$.
We study quantum communication protocols, in which the players' storage starts out in a state where one qubit is in a pure state, and all other qubits are totally mixed (i.e. in a random state), and no other storage is available (for messages or internal computations). This restriction on the available quantum memory has been studied extensively in the model of quantum circuits, and it is known that classically simulating quantum circuits operating on such memory is hard when the additive error of the simulation is exponentially small (in the input length), under the assumption that the polynomial hierarchy does not collapse. We study this setting in communication complexity. The goal is to consider larger additive error for simulation-hardness results, and to not use unproven assumptions. We define a complexity measure for this model that takes into account that standard error reduction techniques do not work here. We define a clocked and a semi-unclocked model, and describe efficient simulations between those. We characterize a one-way communication version of the model in terms of weakly unbounded error communication complexity. Our main result is that there is a quantum protocol using one clean qubit only and using O(log n) qubits of communication, such that any classical protocol simulating the acceptance behaviour of the quantum protocol within additive error 1/poly(n) needs communication Ω(n). We also describe a candidate problem, for which an exponential gap between the one-clean-qubit communication complexity and the randomized communication complexity is likely to hold, and hence a classical simulation of the one-clean-qubit model within constant additive error might be hard in communication complexity. We describe a geometrical conjecture that implies the lower bound.
This paper investigates the power of polynomial-time quantum computation in which only a very limited number of qubits are initially clean in the |0> state, and all the remaining qubits are initially in the totally mixed state. No initializations of qubits are allowed during the computation, nor intermediate measurements. The main results of this paper are unexpectedly strong error-reducible properties of such quantum computations. It is proved that any problem solvable by a polynomial-time quantum computation with one-sided bounded error that uses logarithmically many clean qubits can also be solvable with exponentially small one-sided error using just two clean qubits, and with polynomially small one-sided error using just one clean qubit. It is further proved in the case of two-sided bounded error that any problem solvable by such a computation with a constant gap between completeness and soundness using logarithmically many clean qubits can also be solvable with exponentially small two-sided error using just two clean qubits. If only one clean qubit is available, the problem is again still solvable with exponentially small error in one of the completeness and soundness and polynomially small error in the other. As an immediate consequence of the above result for the two-sided-error case, it follows that the TRACE ESTIMATION problem defined with fixed constant threshold parameters is complete for the classes of problems solvable by polynomial-time quantum computations with completeness 2/3 and soundness 1/3 using logarithmically many clean qubits and just one clean qubit. The techniques used for proving the error-reduction results may be of independent interest in themselves, and one of the technical tools can also be used to show the hardness of weak classical simulations of one-clean-qubit computations (i.e., DQC1 computations).