We study the probability of making an error if, by querying an oracle a fixed number of times, we declare constant a randomly chosen n-bit Boolean function. We compare the classical and the quantum case, and we determine for how many oracle-queries k and for how many bits n one querying procedure is more efficient than the other.
Given a prior probability distribution over a set of possible oracle functions, we define a number of queries to be useless for determining some property of the function if the probability that the function has the property is unchanged after the oracle responds to the queries. A familiar example is the parity of a uniformly random Boolean-valued function over {1,2,...,N}, for which N−1 classical queries are useless. We prove that if 2k classical queries are useless for some oracle problem, then k quantum queries are also useless. For such problems, which include classical threshold secret sharing schemes, our result also gives a new way to obtain a lower bound on the quantum query complexity, even in cases where neither the function nor the property to be determined is Boolean.
Our problem is to evaluate a multi-valued Boolean function F through oracle calls. If F is one-to-one and the size of its domain and range is the same, then our problem can be formulated as follows: Given an oracle f(a,x):{0,1}n×{0,1}n→{0,1} and a fixed (but hidden) value a0, we wish to obtain the value of a0 by querying the oracle f(a0,x). Our goal is to minimize the number of such oracle calls (the query complexity) using a quantum mechanism. Two popular oracles are the EQ-oracle defined as f(a,x)=1 iff x=a and the IP-oracle defined as f(a,x)=a⋅xmod2. It is also well-known that the query complexity is Θ(N) (N=2n) for the EQ-oracle while only O(1) for the IP-oracle. The main purpose of this paper is to fill this gap or to investigate what causes this large difference. To do so, we introduce a parameter K as the maximum number of 1's in a single column of Tf where Tf is the N×N truth-table of the oracle f(a,x). Our main result shows that the (quantum) query complexity is heavily governed by this parameter K: (i) The query complexity is Ω(N/K). (ii) This lower bound is tight in the sense that we can construct an explicit oracle whose query complexity is O(N/K). (iii) The tight complexity, Θ(KN+logK), is also obtained for the classical case. Thus, the quantum algorithm needs a quadratically less number of oracle calls when K is small and this merit becomes larger when K is large, e.g., logK v.s. constant when K=cN.
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