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arXiv:2507.15797

Deterministic Quantum Search via Recursive Oracle Expansion

Burke, John, Ciarán McGoldrick

Published Jul 21, 2025• 0 citations
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Abstract

We introduce a novel deterministic quantum search algorithm that provides a practical alternative to conventional probabilistic search approaches. Our scheme eliminates the inherent uncertainty of quantum search without relying on arbitrary phase rotations, a key limitation of other deterministic methods. The algorithm achieves certainty by recursively expanding the base oracle so that it marks all states prefixed by the same two bits as the target, encompassing exactly one-quarter of the search space. This enables a step-by-step reduction of the superposition until the target state can be measured with certainty. The algorithm achieves deterministic success with a query complexity of $O(N^{\log_2(3)/2}) \approx O(N^{0.7925})$, falling between Grover's $O(\sqrt{N})$ scaling and the classical $O(N)$. Our approach relies exclusively on two-qubit nearest-neighbour diffusion operators, avoiding global diffusion entirely. We show that, despite the increased query complexity, this design reduces the total number of two-qubit gates required for diffusion by more than an order of magnitude for search spaces up to at least 18 qubits, with even greater advantages on hardware with limited qubit connectivity. The scheme's inherent determinism, reliance on simple nearest-neighbour, low-depth operations, and scalable recursive structure make it well-suited for hardware implementation. Additionally, we show that the algorithm naturally supports partial database search, enabling deterministic identification of selected target bits without requiring a full search, further broadening its applicability.

Related papers

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Faster quantum searching with almost any diffusion operator

Avatar Tulsi

Grover's search algorithm drives a quantum system from an initial state $|s\ensuremath{\rangle}$ to a desired final state $|t\ensuremath{\rangle}$ by using selective phase inversions of these two states. Earlier, we studied a generalization of Grover's algorithm that relaxes the assumption of the efficient implementation of ${I}_{s}$, the selective phase inversion of the initial state, also known as a diffusion operator. This assumption is known to become a serious handicap in cases of physical interest. Our general search algorithm works with almost any diffusion operator ${D}_{s}$ with the only restriction of having $|s\ensuremath{\rangle}$ as one of its eigenstates. The price that we pay for using any operator is an increase in the number of oracle queries by a factor of $O(B)$, where $B$ is a characteristic of the eigenspectrum of ${D}_{s}$ and can be large in some situations. Here we show that by using a quantum Fourier transform, we can regain the optimal query complexity of Grover's algorithm without losing the freedom of using any diffusion operator for quantum searching. However, the total number of operators required by the algorithm is still $O(B)$ times more than that of Grover's algorithm. So our algorithm offers an advantage only if the oracle operator is computationally more expensive than the diffusion operator, which is true in most search problems.

arXiv:1503.05712•Physical Review A•May 7, 2015•10 citations
We introduce a novel deterministic quantum search algorithm that provides a practical alternative to conventional probabilistic search approaches. Our scheme eliminates the inherent uncertainty of quantum search without relying on arbitrary phase rotations, a key limitation of other deterministic methods. The algorithm achieves certainty by recursively expanding the base oracle so that it marks all states prefixed by the same two bits as the target, encompassing exactly one-quarter of the search space. This enables a step-by-step reduction of the superposition until the target state can be measured with certainty. The algorithm achieves deterministic success with a query complexity of O(Nlog⁡2(3)/2)≈O(N0.7925)O(N^{\log_2(3)/2}) \approx O(N^{0.7925})O(Nlog2​(3)/2)≈O(N0.7925), falling between Grover's O(N)O(\sqrt{N})O(N​) scaling and the classical O(N)O(N)O(N). Our approach relies exclusively on two-qubit nearest-neighbour diffusion operators, avoiding global diffusion entirely. We show that, despite the increased query complexity, this design reduces the total number of two-qubit gates required for diffusion by more than an order of magnitude for search spaces up to at least 18 qubits, with even greater advantages on hardware with limited qubit connectivity. The scheme's inherent determinism, reliance on simple nearest-neighbour, low-depth operations, and scalable recursive structure make it well-suited for hardware implementation. Additionally, we show that the algorithm naturally supports partial database search, enabling deterministic identification of selected target bits without requiring a full search, further broadening its applicability.
Quantum search is among the most important algorithms in quantum computing. At its core is quantum amplitude amplification, a technique that achieves a quadratic speedup over classical search by combining two global reflections: the oracle, which marks the target, and the diffusion operator, which reflects about the initial state. We show that this speedup can be preserved when the oracle is the only global operator, with all other operations acting locally on non-overlapping partitions of the search register. We present a recursive construction that, when the initial and target states both decompose as tensor products over these chosen partitions, admits an exact closed-form solution for the algorithm's dynamics. This is enabled by an intriguing degeneracy in the principal angles between successive reflections, which collapse to just two distinct values governed by a single recursively defined angle. Applied to unstructured search, a problem that naturally satisfies the tensor decomposition, the approach retains the O(N)O(\sqrt{N})O(N​) oracle complexity of Grover search when each partition contains at least log⁡2(log⁡2N)\log_2(\log_2 N)log2​(log2​N) qubits. On an 18-qubit search problem, partitioning into two stages reduces the non-oracle circuit depth by as much as 51%-96% relative to Grover, requiring up to 9% additional oracle calls. For larger problem sizes this oracle overhead rapidly diminishes, and valuable depth reductions persist when the oracle circuit is substantially deeper than the diffusion operator. More broadly, these results show that a global diffusion operator is not necessary to achieve the quadratic speedup in quantum search, offering a new perspective on this foundational algorithm. Moreover, the scalar reduction at the heart of our analysis inspires and motivates new directions and innovations in quantum algorithm design and evaluation.
Abstract Grover's algorithm solves the unstructured search problem. Grover's algorithm can find the target state with certainty only if searching one out of four. Designing the deterministic search algorithm can avoid any repetition of the algorithm, especially when Grover's algorithm is a subroutine in other algorithms. Grover's algorithm can be deterministic if the phase of the oracle or the diffusion operator is delicately designed. The precision of the phases could be a problem. A near‐deterministic quantum search algorithm without the phase design is proposed. The algorithm has the same oracle and diffusion operators as Grover's algorithm. One additional component is the rescaled diffusion operator. It acts partially on the database. The success probability of Grover's algorithm is improved by the partial diffusion operator in two different ways. The possible cost is one or two more queries to the oracle. The deterministic search algorithm is also designed when searching one out of eight, sixteen, and thirty‐two.
Quantum computing has noteworthy speedup over classical computing by taking advantage of quantum parallelism, i.e., the superposition of states. In particular, quantum search is widely used in various computationally hard problems. Grover's search algorithm finds the target element in an unsorted database with quadratic speedup than classical search and has been proved to be optimal in terms of the number of queries to the database. The challenge, however, is that Grover's search algorithm leads to high numbers of quantum gates, which make it infeasible for the Noise-Intermediate-Scale-Quantum (NISQ) computers. In this paper, we propose a novel hardware efficient quantum search algorithm to overcome this challenge. Our key idea is to replace the global diffusion operation with low-cost local diffusions. Our analysis shows that our algorithm has similar oracle complexity to the original Grover's search algorithm while significantly reduces the circuit depth and gate count. The circuit cost reduction leads to a remarkable improvement in the system success rates, paving the way for quantum search on NISQ machines.
Current approaches to quantum search fail to deeply exploit extant structure in the underlying Hilbert space. Decomposing the search by this structure empowers new strategies and formulations for quantum search and algorithm design. We present a new decomposition technique acting directly on this structure by recursively decomposing the Hilbert space and constructing the search operator from reflections over the resulting partition. When initial and target states factorise over this partition, dynamics reduce to a single rotation in a two-dimensional plane at each level, with angle given by a scalar recurrence. This recurrence avoids error accumulation from separately bounding success probabilities at each level, yielding an exact state description enabling treatment of the recursion as a whole. We obtain the target state deterministically and derive oracle and non-oracle costs independently of the search setting. For unstructured search, our approach attains the simultaneously optimal Θ(N)Θ(\sqrt{N})Θ(N​) oracle and non-oracle gate counts. For spatial search on ddd-dimension grids, it recovers the O(N)O(\sqrt{N})O(N​) time for d≥3d\geq3d≥3 and the O(N(log⁡N)3/2)O\bigl(\sqrt{N}(\log N)^{3/2}\bigr)O(N​(logN)3/2) bound of Aaronson and Ambainis for d=2d=2d=2. The exact description of the recursion extends over our decomposition to new subdivision structures and provides a new approach for applying and analysing recursion in quantum algorithm design.
Grover's quantum search algorithm provides a quadratic quantum advantage over classical algorithms across a broad class of unstructured search problems.The original protocol is probabilistic, returning the desired result with significant probability on each query but, in general, requiring several iterations of the algorithm.We present a modified version to return the correct result with certainty without having user control over the quantum search oracle.Our deterministic, two-parameter "D2p" protocol utilizes generalized phase rotations replacing the phase inversions after a standard oracle query.The D2p protocol achieves a 100% success rate in no more than one additional iteration compared to the optimal number of steps as in the original Grover's search enabling the same quadratic speedup.We also provide a visualization using the Bloch sphere for enhanced geometric intuition.
Grover's search algorithm drives a quantum system from an initial state $|s\ensuremath{\rangle}$ to a desired final state $|t\ensuremath{\rangle}$ by using selective phase inversions of these two states. Earlier, we studied a generalization of Grover's algorithm that relaxes the assumption of the efficient implementation of Is{I}_{s}Is​, the selective phase inversion of the initial state, also known as a diffusion operator. This assumption is known to become a serious handicap in cases of physical interest. Our general search algorithm works with almost any diffusion operator Ds{D}_{s}Ds​ with the only restriction of having $|s\ensuremath{\rangle}$ as one of its eigenstates. The price that we pay for using any operator is an increase in the number of oracle queries by a factor of O(B)O(B)O(B), where BBB is a characteristic of the eigenspectrum of Ds{D}_{s}Ds​ and can be large in some situations. Here we show that by using a quantum Fourier transform, we can regain the optimal query complexity of Grover's algorithm without losing the freedom of using any diffusion operator for quantum searching. However, the total number of operators required by the algorithm is still O(B)O(B)O(B) times more than that of Grover's algorithm. So our algorithm offers an advantage only if the oracle operator is computationally more expensive than the diffusion operator, which is true in most search problems.