We consider memoryless quantum communication protocols, where the two parties do not possess any memory besides their classical input and they take turns performing unitary operations on a pure quantum state that they exchange between them. Most known quantum protocols are of this type and recently a deep connection between memoryless protocols and Bell inequality violations has been explored recently by Buhrman et al. We study the information cost of memoryless quantum protocols by looking at a canonical problem: bounded-round quantum communication protocols for the one-bit AND function. We prove directly a tight lower bound of $Θ(\log(k) / k)$ for the information cost of AND for $k$-round memoryless quantum protocols and for the input distribution needed for the Disjointness function. It is not clear if memoryless protocols allow for a reduction between AND and Disjointness, due to the absence of private workspaces. We enhance the model by allowing the players to keep in their private classical workspace apart from their input also some classical private coins. Surprisingly, we show that every quantum protocol can be transformed into an equivalent quantum protocol with private coins that is perfectly private, i.e. the players only learn the value of the function and nothing more. Last, we consider the model where the players are allowed to use one-shot coins, i.e. private coins that can be used only once during the protocol. While in the classical case, private coins and one-shot coins are equivalent, in the quantum case, we prove that they are not. More precisely, we show that every quantum memoryless protocol with one-bit inputs that uses one-shot coins can be transformed into a memoryless quantum protocol without private coins and without increasing too much its information cost. Hence, while private coins always allow for private quantum protocols, one-shot coins do not.
We consider memoryless quantum communication protocols, where the two parties do not possess any memory besides their classical input and they take turns performing unitary operations on a pure quantum state that they exchange between them. Most known quantum protocols are of this type and recently a deep connection between memoryless protocols and Bell inequality violations has been explored recently by Buhrman et al. We study the information cost of memoryless quantum protocols by looking at a canonical problem: bounded-round quantum communication protocols for the one-bit AND function. We prove directly a tight lower bound of Θ(log(k)/k) for the information cost of AND for k-round memoryless quantum protocols and for the input distribution needed for the Disjointness function. It is not clear if memoryless protocols allow for a reduction between AND and Disjointness, due to the absence of private workspaces. We enhance the model by allowing the players to keep in their private classical workspace apart from their input also some classical private coins. Surprisingly, we show that every quantum protocol can be transformed into an equivalent quantum protocol with private coins that is perfectly private, i.e. the players only learn the value of the function and nothing more. Last, we consider the model where the players are allowed to use one-shot coins, i.e. private coins that can be used only once during the protocol. While in the classical case, private coins and one-shot coins are equivalent, in the quantum case, we prove that they are not. More precisely, we show that every quantum memoryless protocol with one-bit inputs that uses one-shot coins can be transformed into a memoryless quantum protocol without private coins and without increasing too much its information cost. Hence, while private coins always allow for private quantum protocols, one-shot coins do not.
We study the communication complexity of computing functions F:{0,1}n×{0,1}n→{0,1} in the memoryless communication model. Here, Alice is given x∈{0,1}n, Bob is given y∈{0,1}n and their goal is to compute F(x,y) subject to the following constraint: at every round, Alice receives a message from Bob and her reply to Bob solely depends on the message received and her input x; the same applies to Bob. The cost of computing F in this model is the maximum number of bits exchanged in any round between Alice and Bob (on the worst case input x,y). In this paper, we also consider variants of our memoryless model wherein one party is allowed to have memory, the parties are allowed to communicate quantum bits, only one player is allowed to send messages. We show that our memoryless communication model capture the garden-hose model of computation by Buhrman et al. (ITCS'13), space bounded communication complexity by Brody et al. (ITCS'13) and the overlay communication complexity by Papakonstantinou et al. (CCC'14). Thus the memoryless communication complexity model provides a unified framework to study space-bounded communication models. We establish the following: (1) We show that the memoryless communication complexity of F equals the logarithm of the size of the smallest bipartite branching program computing F (up to a factor 2); (2) We show that memoryless communication complexity equals garden-hose complexity; (3) We exhibit various exponential separations between these memoryless communication models. We end with an intriguing open question: can we find an explicit function F and universal constant c>1 for which the memoryless communication complexity is at least clogn? Note that c≥2+ε would imply a Ω(n2+ε) lower bound for general formula size, improving upon the best lower bound by Nečiporuk in 1966.
We study the communication complexity of computing functions F: {0,1}ⁿ × {0,1}ⁿ → {0,1} in the memoryless communication model. Here, Alice is given x ∈ {0,1}ⁿ, Bob is given y ∈ {0,1}ⁿ and their goal is to compute F(x,y) subject to the following constraint: at every round, Alice receives a message from Bob and her reply to Bob solely depends on the message received and her input x (in particular, her reply is independent of the information from the previous rounds); the same applies to Bob. The cost of computing F in this model is the maximum number of bits exchanged in any round between Alice and Bob (on the worst case input x,y). In this paper, we also consider variants of our memoryless model wherein one party is allowed to have memory, the parties are allowed to communicate quantum bits, only one player is allowed to send messages. We show that some of these different variants of our memoryless communication model capture the garden-hose model of computation by Buhrman et al. (ITCS'13), space-bounded communication complexity by Brody et al. (ITCS'13) and the overlay communication complexity by Papakonstantinou et al. (CCC'14). Thus the memoryless communication complexity model provides a unified framework to study all these space-bounded communication complexity models. We establish the following main results: (1) We show that the memoryless communication complexity of F equals the logarithm of the size of the smallest bipartite branching program computing F (up to a factor 2); (2) We show that memoryless communication complexity equals garden-hose model of computation; (3) We exhibit various exponential separations between these memoryless communication models. We end with an intriguing open question: can we find an explicit function F and universal constant c > 1 for which the memoryless communication complexity is at least c log n? Note that c ≥ 2+ε would imply a Ω(n^{2+ε}) lower bound for general formula size, improving upon the best lower bound by [Nečiporuk, 1966].
In two-party quantum communication complexity, Alice and Bob receive some classical inputs and wish to compute some function that depends on both these inputs, while minimizing the communication. This model has found numerous applications in many areas of computer science. One notion that has received a lot of attention recently is the information cost of the protocol, namely how much information the players reveal about their inputs when they run the protocol. In the quantum world, it is not straightforward to define a notion of quantum information cost. We study two different notions and analyze their relation. We also provide new quantum protocols for the Inner Product function and for Private Information Retrieval, and show that protocols for Private Information Retrieval whose classical or quantum information cost for the user is zero can have exponentially different information cost for the server.
We define a new notion of information cost for quantum protocols, and a corresponding notion of quantum information complexity for bipartite quantum channels, and then investigate the properties of such quantities. These are the fully quantum generalizations of the analogous quantities for bipartite classical functions that have found many applications recently, in particular for proving communication complexity lower bounds. Our definition is strongly tied to the quantum state redistribution task. Previous attempts have been made to define such a quantity for quantum protocols, with particular applications in mind; our notion differs from these in many respects. First, it directly provides a lower bound on the quantum communication cost, independent of the number of rounds of the underlying protocol. Secondly, we provide an operational interpretation for quantum information complexity: we show that it is exactly equal to the amortized quantum communication complexity of a bipartite channel on a given state. This generalizes a result of Braverman and Rao to quantum protocols, and even strengthens the classical result in a bounded round scenario. Also, this provides an analogue of the Schumacher source compression theorem for interactive quantum protocols, and answers a question raised by Braverman. We also discuss some potential applications to quantum communication complexity lower bounds by specializing our definition for classical functions and inputs. Building on work of Jain, Radhakrishnan and Sen, we provide new evidence suggesting that the bounded round quantum communication complexity of the disjointness function is Ω(n/M + M), for M-message protocols. This would match the best known upper bound.
The private simultaneous messages model is a non-interactive version of the multiparty secure computation, which has been intensively studied to examine the communication cost of the secure computation. We consider its quantum counterpart, the private simultaneous quantum messages (PSQM) model, and examine the advantages of quantum communication and prior entanglement of this model. In the PSQM model, k parties P1,…,Pk initially share a common random string (or entangled states in a stronger setting), and they have private classical inputs x1,…,xk. Every Pi generates a quantum message from the private input xi and the shared random string (entangled states), and then sends it to the referee R. Receiving the messages, R computes F(x1,…,xk). Then, R learns nothing except for F(x1,…,xk) as the privacy condition. We obtain the following results for this PSQM model. (1) We demonstrate that the privacy condition inevitably increases the communication cost in the two-party PSQM model as well as in the classical case presented by Applebaum, Holenstein, Mishra, and Shayevitz. In particular, we prove a lower bound (3−o(1))n of the communication complexity in two-party PSQM protocols with a shared random string for random Boolean functions of 2n-bit input, which is larger than the trivial upper bound 2n of the communication complexity without the privacy condition. (2) We demonstrate a factor two gap between the communication complexity of PSQM protocols with shared entangled states and with shared random strings by designing a multiparty PSQM protocol with shared entangled states for a total function that extends the two-party equality function. (3) We demonstrate an exponential gap between the communication complexity of PSQM protocols with shared entangled states and with shared random strings for a two-party partial function.
In the context of two-party interactive quantum communication protocols, we study a recently defined notion of quantum information cost (QIC), which possesses most of the important properties of its classical analogue. Although this definition has the advantage to be valid for fully quantum inputs and tasks, its interpretation for classical tasks remained rather obscure. Also, the link between this new notion and other notions of information cost for quantum protocols that had previously appeared in the literature was not clear, if existent at all. We settle both these issues: for quantum communication with classical inputs, we provide an alternate characterization of QIC in terms of information about the input registers, avoiding any reference to the notion of a purification of the classical input state. We provide an exact operational interpretation of this alternative characterization as the sum of the cost of transmitting information about the classical inputs and the cost of forgetting information about these inputs. To obtain this characterization, we prove a general lemma, the Information Flow Lemma, assessing exactly the transfer of information in general interactive quantum processes. Furthermore, we clarify the link between QIC and IC of classical protocols by simulating quantumly classical protocols. Finally, we apply these concepts to argue that any quantum protocol that does not forget information solves Disjointness on n-bits in Omega (n) communication, completely losing the quadratic quantum speedup. This provides a specific sense in which forgetting information is a necessary feature of interactive quantum protocols. We also apply these concepts to prove that QIC at zero-error is exactly n for the Inner Product function, and n (1 - o(1)) for a random Boolean function on n+n bits.