The divide-and-conquer framework, used extensively in classical algorithm design, recursively breaks a problem of size n into smaller subproblems (say, a copies of size \(n/b\) each), along with some auxiliary work of cost \(C^{\mathrm{aux}}(n)\) , to give a recurrence relation \(\begin{equation*} C(n) \le a \, C(n/b) + C^{\mathrm{aux}}(n) \end{equation*}\) for the classical complexity \(C(n)\) . We describe a quantum divide-and-conquer framework that, in certain cases, yields an analogous recurrence relation \(\begin{equation*} C_Q(n) \le \sqrt {a} \, C_Q(n/b) + O(C^{\mathrm{aux}}_Q(n)) \end{equation*}\) that characterizes the quantum query complexity. We apply this framework to obtain near-optimal quantum query complexities for various string problems, such as (i) recognizing the regular language \(\Sigma ^* 2 0^* 2 \Sigma ^*\) over the alphabet \(\Sigma = \lbrace 0,1,2\rbrace\) ; (ii) decision versions of String Rotation and String Suffix; and natural parameterized versions of (iii) Longest Increasing Subsequence and (iv) Longest Common Subsequence.
The divide-and-conquer framework, used extensively in classical algorithm design, recursively breaks a problem of size n into smaller subproblems (say, a copies of size (n/b) each), along with some auxiliary work of cost (C^{\mathrm{aux}}(n)) , to give a recurrence relation (\begin{equation*} C(n) \le a , C(n/b) + C^{\mathrm{aux}}(n) \end{equation*}) for the classical complexity (C(n)) . We describe a quantum divide-and-conquer framework that, in certain cases, yields an analogous recurrence relation (\begin{equation*} C_Q(n) \le \sqrt {a} , C_Q(n/b) + O(C^{\mathrm{aux}}_Q(n)) \end{equation*}) that characterizes the quantum query complexity. We apply this framework to obtain near-optimal quantum query complexities for various string problems, such as (i) recognizing the regular language (\Sigma ^* 2 0^* 2 \Sigma ^*) over the alphabet (\Sigma = \lbrace 0,1,2\rbrace) ; (ii) decision versions of String Rotation and String Suffix; and natural parameterized versions of (iii) Longest Increasing Subsequence and (iv) Longest Common Subsequence.
In this work, we initiate a systematic study of the time complexity of quantum divide and conquer (QD&C) algorithms for classical problems, and propose a general framework for their analysis. We establish generic conditions under which search and minimization problems with classical divide and conquer algorithms are amenable to quantum speedup, and apply these theorems to various problems involving strings, integers, and geometric objects. These include Longest Distinct Substring, Klee's Coverage, several optimization problems on stock transactions, and k-Increasing Subsequence. For most of these problems our quantum time upper bounds match the quantum query lower bounds, up to polylogarithmic factors. We give a structured framework for describing and classifying a wide variety of QD&C algorithms so that quantum speedups can be more easily identified and applied, and prove general statements on QD&C time complexity covering a range of cases, accounting for the time required for all operations. In particular, we explicitly account for memory access operations in the commonly used QRAM (read-only) and QRAG (read-write) models, which are assumed to take unit time in the query model, and which require careful analysis when involved in recursion. Our generic QD&C theorems have several nice features. 1) To apply them, it suffices to come up with a classical divide and conquer algorithm satisfying the conditions of the theorem. The quantization of the algorithm is then completely handled by the theorem. This can make it easier to find applications which admit a quantum speedup, and contrast with dynamic programming algorithms which can be difficult to quantize due to their highly sequential nature. 2) As these theorems give bounds on time complexity, they can be applied to a greater range of problems than those based on query complexity, e.g., where the best-known quantum algorithms require super-linear time. 3) It can handle minimization problems as well as boolean functions, which allows us to improve on the query complexity result of Childs et al. [Childs et al., 2025] for k-Increasing Subsequence by a logarithmic factor.
We study quantum algorithms for several fundamental string problems, including Longest Common Substring, Lexicographically Minimal String Rotation, and Longest Square Substring. These problems have been widely studied in the stringology literature since the 1970s, and are known to be solvable by near-linear time classical algorithms. In this work, we give quantum algorithms for these problems with near-optimal query complexities and time complexities. Specifically, we show that: - Longest Common Substring can be solved by a quantum algorithm in O~(n2/3) time, improving upon the recent O~(n5/6)-time algorithm by Le Gall and Seddighin (2020). Our algorithm uses the MNRS quantum walk framework, together with a careful combination of string synchronizing sets (Kempa and Kociumaka, 2019) and generalized difference covers. - Lexicographically Minimal String Rotation can be solved by a quantum algorithm in n1/2+o(1) time, improving upon the recent O~(n3/4)-time algorithm by Wang and Ying (2020). We design our algorithm by first giving a new classical divide-and-conquer algorithm in near-linear time based on exclusion rules, and then speeding it up quadratically using nested Grover search and quantum minimum finding. - Longest Square Substring can be solved by a quantum algorithm in O~(n) time. Our algorithm is an adaptation of the algorithm by Le Gall and Seddighin (2020) for the Longest Palindromic Substring problem, but uses additional techniques to overcome the difficulty that binary search no longer applies. Our techniques naturally extend to other related string problems, such as Longest Repeated Substring, Longest Lyndon Substring, and Minimal Suffix.
Abstract We study quantum algorithms for several fundamental string problems, including Longest Common Substring, Lexicographically Minimal String Rotation, and Longest Square Substring. These problems have been widely studied in the stringology literature since the 1970s, and are known to be solvable by near-linear time classical algorithms. In this work, we give quantum algorithms for these problems with near-optimal query complexities and time complexities. Specifically, we show that: Longest Common Substring can be solved by a quantum algorithm in O~(n2/3) O ~ ( n 2 / 3 ) time, improving upon the recent O~(n5/6) O ~ ( n 5 / 6 ) -time algorithm by Le Gall and Seddighin (in: Proceedings of the 13th innovations in theoretical computer science conference (ITCS 2022), pp 97:1–97:23, 2022. https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.ITCS.2022.97 ). Our algorithm uses the MNRS quantum walk framework, together with a careful combination of string synchronizing sets (Kempa and Kociumaka, in: Proceedings of the 51st annual ACM SIGACT symposium on theory of computing (STOC 2019), ACM, pp 756–767, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1145/3313276.3316368 ) and generalized difference covers. Lexicographically Minimal String Rotation can be solved by a quantum algorithm in n1/2+o(1) n 1 / 2 + o ( 1 ) time, improving upon the recent O~(n3/4) O ~ ( n 3 / 4 ) -time algorithm by Wang and Ying (in: Quantum algorithm for lexicographically minimal string rotation. CoRR, 2020. arXiv:2012.09376 ). We design our algorithm by first giving a new classical divide-and-conquer algorithm in near-linear time based on exclusion rules, and then speeding it up quadratically using nested Grover search and quantum minimum finding. Longest Square Substring can be solved by a quantum algorithm in O~(n) O ~ ( n ) time. Our algorithm is an adaptation of the algorithm by Le Gall and Seddighin (2022) for the Longest Palindromic Substring problem, but uses additional techniques to overcome the difficulty that binary search no longer applies. Our techniques naturally extend to other related string problems, such as Longest Repeated Substring, Longest Lyndon Substring, and Minimal Suffix.
We study quantum algorithms for several fundamental string problems, including Longest Common Substring, Lexicographically Minimal String Rotation, and Longest Square Substring. These problems have been widely studied in the stringology literature since the 1970s, and are known to be solvable by near-linear time classical algorithms. In this work, we give quantum algorithms for these problems with near-optimal query complexities and time complexities. Specifically, we show that: Longest Common Substring can be solved by a quantum algorithm in Õ(n2/3) time, improving upon the recent Õ(n5/6)-time algorithm by Le Gall and Seddighin (2020). Our algorithm uses the MNRS quantum walk framework, together with a careful combination of string synchronizing sets (Kempa and Kociumaka, 2019) and generalized difference covers. Lexicographically Minimal String Rotation can be solved by a quantum algorithm in n1/2 + o(1) time, improving upon the recent Õ(n3/4)-time algorithm by Wang and Ying (2020). We design our algorithm by first giving a new classical divide-and-conquer algorithm in near-linear time based on exclusion rules, and then speeding it up quadratically using nested Grover search and quantum minimum finding. Longest Square Substring can be solved by a quantum algorithm in time. Our algorithm is an adaptation of the algorithm by Le Gall and Seddighin (2020) for the Longest Palindromic Substring problem, but uses additional techniques to overcome the difficulty that binary search no longer applies. Our techniques naturally extend to other related string problems, such as Longest Repeated Substring, Longest Lyndon Substring, and Minimal Suffix.
In the search with wildcards problem [Ambainis, Montanaro, Quantum Inf.~Comput.'14], one's goal is to learn an unknown bit-string x∈{−1,1}n. An algorithm may, at unit cost, test equality of any subset of the hidden string with a string of its choice. Ambainis and Montanaro showed a quantum algorithm of cost O(nlogn) and a near-matching lower bound of Ω(n). Belovs [Comput.~Comp.'15] subsequently showed a tight O(n) upper bound.
We consider a natural generalization of this problem, parametrized by a subset Q⊆2[n], where an algorithm may test whether xS=b for an arbitrary S∈Q and b∈{−1,1}S of its choice, at unit cost. We show near-tight bounds when Q is any of the following collections: bounded-size sets, contiguous blocks, prefixes, and only the full set.
All of these results are derived using a framework that we develop. Using symmetries of the task at hand we show that the quantum query complexity of learning x is characterized, up to a constant factor, by an optimization program, which is succinctly described as follows: `maximize over all odd functions f:{−1,1}n→R the ratio of the maximum value of f to the maximum (over T∈Q) standard deviation of f on a subcube whose free variables are exactly T.'
To the best of our knowledge, ours is the first work to use the primal version of the negative-weight adversary bound (which is a maximization program typically used to show lower bounds) to show new quantum query upper bounds without explicitly resorting to SDP duality.
Lexicographically minimal string rotation is a fundamental problem in string processing that has recently garnered significant attention in quantum computing. Near-optimal quantum algorithms have been proposed for solving this problem, utilizing a divide-and-conquer structure. In this note, we show that its quantum query complexity is n ⋅ 2 O ( log n ) , improving the prior result of n ⋅ 2 ( log n ) 1 / 2 + ε by Akmal and Jin (2022). Notably, this improvement is quasi-polylogarithmic, which is achieved by only logarithmic level-wise optimization using fault-tolerant quantum minimum finding.