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SIAM Journal on Computing

Superlinear Advantage for Exact Quantum Algorithms

Andris Ambainis

Published Jan 1, 2016• 22 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A quantum algorithm is exact if, on any input data, it outputs the correct answer with certainty (probability 1). A key question is, how big is the advantage of exact quantum algorithms over their classical counterparts: deterministic algorithms? We present the first example of a total Boolean function $f(x_1,\ldots, x_N)$ for which exact quantum algorithms have superlinear advantage over deterministic algorithms. Any deterministic algorithm that computes our function must use $N$ queries but an exact quantum algorithm can compute it with $O(N^{0.8675\ldots})$ queries. A modification of our function gives a similar result for communication complexity: there is a function $f$ which can be computed by an exact quantum protocol that communicates $O(N^{0.8675\ldots}\log N)$ quantum bits but requires $\Omega(N)$ bits of communication for classical protocols.

DOI
10.1137/130939043

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A quantum algorithm is exact if, on any input data, it outputs the correct answer with certainty (probability 1). A key question is: how big is the advantage of exact quantum algorithms over their classical counterparts: deterministic algorithms. For total Boolean functions in the query model, the biggest known gap was just a factor of 2: PARITY of N input bits requires N queries classically but can be computed with N/2 queries by an exact quantum algorithm. We present the first example of a Boolean function f(x1, ..., xN) for which exact quantum algorithms have superlinear advantage over deterministic algorithms. Any deterministic algorithm that computes our function must use N queries but an exact quantum algorithm can compute it with O(N0.8675...) queries. A modification of our function gives a similar result for communication complexity: there is a function f which can be computed by an exact quantum protocol that communicates O(N^{0.8675...}) quantum bits but requires Omega(N) bits of communication for classical protocols.
A quantum algorithm is exact if, on any input data, it outputs the correct answer with certainty (probability 1). A key question is: how big is the advantage of exact quantum algorithms over their classical counterparts: deterministic algorithms. For total Boolean functions in the query model, the biggest known gap was just a factor of 2: PARITY of N inputs bits requires NNN queries classically but can be computed with N/2 queries by an exact quantum algorithm. We present the first example of a Boolean function f(x_1, ..., x_N) for which exact quantum algorithms have superlinear advantage over the deterministic algorithms. Any deterministic algorithm that computes our function must use N queries but an exact quantum algorithm can compute it with O(N^{0.8675...}) queries.
Many quantum algorithms can be analyzed in a query model to compute Boolean functions where input is given by a black box. As in the classical version of decision trees, different kinds of quantum query algorithms are possible: exact, with bounded error and even nondeterministic. In this paper, we study the latter class of algorithms. We introduce a new notion in addition to already studied nondeterministic algorithms and introduce dual nondeterministic quantum query algorithms. We examine properties of such algorithms and prove relations with exact and nondeterministic quantum query algorithm complexity. As a result and as an example of the application of discovered properties, we demonstrate a gap of n vs. 2 between classical deterministic and dual nondeterministic quantum query complexity for a specific Boolean function. Finally, we show an approach how to construct examples where quantum nondeterministic complexity of an algorithm is O(1), however classical deterministic algorithm for the same function would require O(n) queries.
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.
We present several families of total boolean functions which have exact quantum query com-plexity which is a constant multiple (between 1/2 and 2/3) of their classical query complexity, and show that optimal quantum algorithms for these functions cannot be obtained by simply computing parities of pairs of bits. We also characterise the model of nonadaptive exact quantum query complexity in terms of coding theory and completely characterise the query complexity of symmetric boolean functions in this context. These results were originally inspired by nu-merically solving the semidefinite programs characterising quantum query complexity for small problem sizes. We include numerical results giving the optimal success probabilities achievable by quantum algorithms computing all boolean functions on up to 4 bits, and all symmetric boolean functions on up to 6 bits. 1