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arXiv:cs/0407056 · IEEE Conference on Computational Complexity (CCC)

On the Hardness of Distinguishing Mixed-State Quantum Computations

Bill Rosgen, John Watrous

Published Jun 28, 2005• 66 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

This paper considers the following problem. Two mixed-state quantum circuits Q/sub 0/ and Q/sub 1/ are given, and the goal is to determine which of two possibilities holds: (i) Q/sub 0/ and Q/sub 1/ act nearly identically on all possible quantum state inputs, or (ii) there exists some input state /spl rho/ that Q/sub 0/ and Q/sub 1/ transform into almost perfectly distinguishable outputs. This may be viewed as an abstraction of the problem that asks, given two discrete quantum mechanical processes described by sequences of local interactions, are the processes effectively the same or are they different? We prove that this promise problem is complete for the class QIP of problems having quantum interactive proof systems, and is therefore PSPACE-hard. This is in contrast to the fact that the analogous problem for classical (probabilistic) circuits is in AM, and for unitary quantum circuits is in QMA.

DOI
10.1109/ccc.2005.21

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This paper considers the following problem. Two mixed-state quantum circuits Q/sub 0/ and Q/sub 1/ are given, and the goal is to determine which of two possibilities holds: (i) Q/sub 0/ and Q/sub 1/ act nearly identically on all possible quantum state inputs, or (ii) there exists some input state /spl rho/ that Q/sub 0/ and Q/sub 1/ transform into almost perfectly distinguishable outputs. This may be viewed as an abstraction of the problem that asks, given two discrete quantum mechanical processes described by sequences of local interactions, are the processes effectively the same or are they different? We prove that this promise problem is complete for the class QIP of problems having quantum interactive proof systems, and is therefore PSPACE-hard. This is in contrast to the fact that the analogous problem for classical (probabilistic) circuits is in AM, and for unitary quantum circuits is in QMA.
Suppose that a polynomial-time mixed-state quantum circuit, described as a sequence of local unitary interactions followed by a partial trace, generates a quantum state shared between two parties. One might then wonder, does this quantum circuit produce a state that is separable or entangled? Here, we give evidence that it is computationally hard to decide the answer to this question, even if one has access to the power of quantum computation. We begin by exhibiting a two-message quantum interactive proof system that can decide the answer to a promise version of the question. We then prove that the promise problem is hard for the class of promise problems with "quantum statistical zero knowledge" QSZK proof systems by demonstrating a polynomial-time Karp reduction from the QSZK-complete promise problem "quantum state distinguishability" to our quantum separability problem. By exploiting Knill's efficient encoding of a matrix description of a state into a description of a circuit to generate the state, we can show that our promise problem is NP-hard with respect to Cook reductions. Thus, the quantum separability problem (as phrased above) constitutes the first nontrivial promise problem decidable by a two-message quantum interactive proof system while being hard for both NP and QSZK. We also consider a variant of the problem, in which a given polynomial-time mixed-state quantum circuit accepts a quantum state as input, and the question is to decide if there is an input to this circuit which makes its output separable across some bipartite cut. We prove that this problem is a complete promise problem for the class QIP of problems decidable by quantum interactive proof systems. Finally, we show that a two-message quantum interactive proof system can also decide a multipartite generalization of the quantum separability problem.
The computational problem of distinguishing two quantum channels is central to quantum computing. It is a generalization of the well-known satisfiability problem from classical to quantum computation. This problem is shown to be surprisingly hard: it is complete for the class QIP of problems that have quantum interactive proof systems, which implies that it is hard for the class PSPACE of problems solvable by a classical computation in polynomial space. Several restrictions of distinguishability are also shown to be hard. It is no easier when restricted to quantum computations of logarithmic depth, to mixed-unitary channels, to degradable channels, or to antidegradable channels. These hardness results are demonstrated by finding reductions between these classes of quantum channels. These techniques have applications outside the distinguishability problem, as the construction for mixed-unitary channels is used to prove that the additivity problem for the classical capacity of quantum channels can be equivalently restricted to the mixed unitary channels.
Suppose that a polynomial-time mixed-state quantum circuit, described as a sequence of local unitary interactions followed by a partial trace, generates a quantum state shared between two parties. One might then wonder, does this quantum circuit produce a state that is separable or entangled? Here, we give evidence that it is computationally hard to decide the answer to this question, even if one has access to the power of quantum computation. We begin by exhibiting a two-message quantum interactive proof system that can decide the answer to a promise version of the question. We then prove that the promise problem is hard for the class of promise problems with "quantum statistical zero knowledge" (QSZK) proof systems by demonstrating a polynomial-time Karp reduction from the QSZK-complete promise problem "quantum state distinguish ability" to our quantum separability problem. By exploiting Knill's efficient encoding of a matrix description of a state into a description of a circuit to generate the state, we can show that our promise problem is NP-hard with respect to Cook reductions. Thus, the quantum separability problem (as phrased above) constitutes the first nontrivial promise problem decidable by a two-message quantum interactive proof system while being hard for both NP and QSZK. We also consider a variant of the problem, in which a given polynomial-time mixed-state quantum circuit accepts a quantum state as input, and the question is to decide if there is an input to this circuit which makes its output separable across some bipartite cut. We prove that this problem is a complete promise problem for the class QIP of problems decidable by quantum interactive proof systems. Finally, we show that a two-message quantum interactive proof system can also decide a multipartite generalization of the quantum separability problem.
Suppose that a polynomial-time mixed-state quantum circuit, described as a sequence of local unitary interactions followed by a partial trace, generates a quantum state shared between two parties. One might then wonder, does this quantum circuit produce a state that is separable or entangled? Here, we give evidence that it is computationally hard to decide the answer to this question, even if one has access to the power of quantum computation. We begin by exhibiting a two-message quantum interactive proof system that can decide the answer to a promise version of the question. We then prove that the promise problem is hard for the class of promise problems with 'quantum statistical zero knowledge' (QSZK) proof systems by demonstrating a polynomial-time Karp reduction from the QSZK-complete promise problem 'quantum state distinguish ability' to our quantum separability problem. By exploiting Knill's efficient encoding of a matrix description of a state into a description of a circuit to generate the state, we can show that our promise problem is NP-hard with respect to Cook reductions. Thus, the quantum separability problem (as phrased above) constitutes the first nontrivial promise problem decidable by a two-message quantum interactive proof system while being hard for both NP and QSZK. We also consider a variant of the problem, in which a given polynomial-time mixed-state quantum circuit accepts a quantum state as input, and the question is to decide if there is an input to this circuit which makes its output separable across some bipartite cut. We prove that this problem is a complete promise problem for the class QIP of problems decidable by quantum interactive proof systems. Finally, we show that a two-message quantum interactive proof system can also decide a multipartite generalization of the quantum separability problem. © 2013 IEEE.
QMA and QCMA are possible quantum analogues of the complexity class NP. In QMA the proof is a quantum state and the verification is a quantum circuit. In contrast, in QCMA the proof is restricted to be a classical state. It is not known whether QMA strictly contains QCMA. Here we show that two known QMA-complete problems can be modified to QCMA-complete problems in a natural way: (1) Deciding whether a 3-local Hamiltonian has low energy states (with energy smaller than a given value) that can be prepared with at most k elementary gates is QCMA-complete, whereas it is QMA-complete when the restriction on the complexity of preparation is dropped. (2) Deciding whether a (classically described) quantum circuit does not act as the identity on all basis states is QCMA-complete. It is QMA-complete to decide whether it does not act on all states as the identity.
We identify a formal connection between physical problems related to the detection of separable (unentangled) quantum states and complexity classes in theoretical computer science. In particular, we show that to nearly every quantum interactive proof complexity class (including BQP, QMA, QMA(2), and QSZK), there corresponds a natural separability testing problem that is complete for that class. Of particular interest is the fact that the problem of determining whether an isometry can be made to produce a separable state is either QMA-complete or QMA(2)-complete, depending upon whether the distance between quantum states is measured by the one-way LOCC norm or the trace norm. We obtain strong hardness results by employing prior work on entanglement purification protocols to prove that for each n-qubit maximally entangled state there exists a fixed one-way LOCC measurement that distinguishes it from any separable state with error probability that decays exponentially in n.