In the black-box model, problems constrained by a `promise' are the only ones that admit a quantum exponential speedup over the best classical algorithm in terms of query complexity. The most prominent example of this is the Deutsch-Jozsa algorithm. More recently, Wim van Dam put forward an algorithm for unstructured problems (i.e., those without a promise). We consider the Deutsch-Jozsa algorithm with a less restrictive (or `broken') promise and study the transition to an unstructured problem. We compare this to the success of van Dam's algorithm. These are both compared with a standard classical sampling algorithm. The Deutsch-Jozsa algorithm remains good as the problem initially becomes less structured, but the van Dam algorithm can be adapted so as to become superior to the Deutsch-Jozsa algorithm as the promise is weakened.
In the black-box model, problems constrained by a ‘promise ’ are the only ones that admit a quantum exponential speedup over the best classical algorithm in terms of query complexity. The most prominent example of this is the Deutsch-Jozsa algorithm. More recently, Wim van Dam put forward an algorithm for unstructured problems (i.e., those without a promise). We consider the Deutsch-Jozsa algorithm with a less restrictive (or ‘broken’) promise and study the transition to an unstructured problem. We compare this to the success of van Dam’s algorithm. These are both compared with a standard classical sampling algorithm. The Deutsch-Jozsa algorithm remains good as the problem initially becomes less structured, but the van Dam algorithm can be adapted so as to become superior to the Deutsch-Jozsa algorithm as the promise is weakened. 1
In the black-box model, problems constrained by a "promise" are the only ones that admit a quantum exponential speedup over the best classical algorithm in terms of query complexity. The most prominent example of this is the Deutsch-Jozsa algorithm. More recently, Wim van Dam put forward an algorithm for unstrucred problems (i.e., those without a promise). We consider the Deutsch-Jozsa algorithm with a less restrictive (or "broken") promise and study the transition to an unstructured problem. We compare this to the success of van Dam's algorithm. These are both compared with a standard classical sampling algorithm. The Deutsch-Jozsa algorithm remains good as the problem initially becomes less structured, but the van Dam algorithm can be adapted so as to become superior to the Deutsch-Jozsa algorithm as the promise is weakened.
The Deutsch-Jozsa algorithm is one of the first examples of a quantum algorithm that is exponentially faster than any possible deterministic classical algorithm. It was proposed by Deutsch and Jozsa in 1992 with improvements by Cleve, Ekert, Macchiavello, and Mosca in 1998. The Deutsch-Jozsa problem is a promise problem and we can equivalently describe it as a partial function ${\text{DJ}}_{n}^{0}:{{0,1}}^{n}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}{0,1}$ defined as
DJn0(x)=1 for
∣x∣=n/2,DJn0(x)=0 for
∣x∣=0,n, and it is undefined for the rest of the cases, where
n is even, and
∣x∣ is the Hamming weight of
x. The optimal quantum algorithm needs only one query to compute
DJn0 but the classical deterministic algorithm requires ${2}^{n\ensuremath{-}1}+1$ queries to compute it in the worse case. In this article, we generalize the Deutsch-Jozsa problem as
DJnk(x)=1 for
∣x∣=n/2,DJnk(x)=0 for
∣x∣ in the set ${0,1,...,k,n\ensuremath{-}k,n\ensuremath{-}k+1,...,n}$, and it is undefined for the rest of the cases, where $0\ensuremath{\le}k<n/2$. In particular, we give and prove an optimal exact quantum query algorithm with complexity
k+1 for computing the generalized Deutsch-Jozsa problem
DJnk. It is clear that the case of
k=0 is in accordance with the Deutsch-Jozsa problem. Also, we give a method for finding the approximate and exact degrees of symmetric partial Boolean functions.
The query model (or black-box model) has attracted much attention from the communities of both classical and quantum computing. Usually, quantum advantages are revealed by presenting a quantum algorithm that has a better query complexity than its classical counterpart. For example, the well-known quantum algorithms including Deutsch-Jozsa algorithm, Simon algorithm and Grover algorithm all show a considerable advantage of quantum computing from the viewpoint of query complexity. Recently we have considered in (Phys. Rev. A. {\bf 101}, 02232 (2020)) the problem: what functions can be computed by an exact one-query quantum algorithm? This problem has been addressed for total Boolean functions but still open for partial Boolean functions. Thus, in this paper we continue to characterize the computational power of exact one-query quantum algorithms for partial Boolean functions by giving several necessary and sufficient conditions. By these conditions, we construct some new functions that can be computed exactly by one-query quantum algorithms but have essential difference from the already known ones. Note that before our work, the known functions that can be computed by exact one-query quantum algorithms are all symmetric functions, whereas the ones constructed in this papers are generally asymmetric.