It is an established fact that for many of the interesting problems quantum algorithms based on queries of the standard oracle bring no significant improvement in comparison to known classical algorithms. It is conceivable that there are other oracles of algorithmic importance acting in a less intuitive fashion to which such limitations do not apply. Thus motivated this article suggests a broader understanding towards what a general quantum oracle is. We propose a general definition of a quantum oracle and give a classification of quantum oracles based on the behavior of the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of their queries. Our aim is to determine the computational characteristics of a quantum oracle in terms of these eigenvalues and eigenvectors. Within this framework we attempt to describe the class of quantum oracles that are efficiently simulated by the standard oracle and compare the computational strength of different kinds of quantum oracles by an adversary argument using trigonometric polynomials.
It is an established fact that for many of the interesting problems quantum algorithms based on queries of the standard oracle bring no significant improvement in comparison to known classical algorithms. It is conceivable that there are other oracles of algorithmic importance acting in a less intuitive fashion to which such limitations do not apply. Thus motivated this article suggests a broader understanding towards what a general quantum oracle is. We propose a general definition of a quantum oracle and give a classification of quantum oracles based on the behavior of the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of their queries. Our aim is to determine the computational characteristics of a quantum oracle in terms of these eigenvalues and eigenvectors. Within this framework we attempt to describe the class of quantum oracles that are efficiently simulated by the standard oracle and compare the computational strength of different kinds of quantum oracles by an adversary argument using trigonometric polynomials.
Query complexity is a common tool for comparing quantum and classical computation, and it has produced many examples of how quantum algorithms differ from classical ones. Here we investigate in detail the role that oracles play for the advantage of quantum algorithms. We do so by using a simulation framework, Quantum Simulation Logic (QSL), to construct oracles and algorithms that solve some problems with the same success probability and number of queries as the quantum algorithms. The framework can be simulated using only classical resources at a constant overhead as compared to the quantum resources used in quantum computation. Our results clarify the assumptions made and the conditions needed when using quantum oracles. Using the same assumptions on oracles within the simulation framework we show that for some specific algorithms, such as the Deutsch-Jozsa and Simon's algorithms, there simply is no advantage in terms of query complexity. This does not detract from the fact that quantum query complexity provides examples of how a quantum computer can be expected to behave, which in turn has proved useful for finding new quantum algorithms outside of the oracle paradigm, where the most prominent example is Shor's algorithm for integer factorization.
A standard quantum oracle Sf for a general function $f: {Z}_{N}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}{Z}_{N}$ is defined to act on two input states and return two outputs, with inputs ∣i〉 and $|j〉 (i,j\ensuremath{\in}{Z}_{N})$ returning outputs ∣i〉 and $|j\ensuremath{\bigoplus}f(i)〉.$ However, if f is known to be a one-to-one function, a simpler oracle, Mf, which returns ∣f(i)〉 given ∣i〉, can also be defined. We consider the relative strengths of these oracles. We define a simple promise problem that minimal quantum oracles can solve exponentially faster than classical oracles, via an algorithm that cannot be naively adapted to standard quantum oracles. We show that Sf can be constructed by invoking Mf and ${(M}_{f}{)}^{\ensuremath{-}1}$ once each, while $\ensuremath{\Theta}(\sqrt{N})$ invocations of Sf and/or ${(S}_{f}{)}^{\ensuremath{-}1}$ are required to construct Mf.
The Quantum Oracle Classification (QOC) problem is to classify a function, given only quantum black box access, into one of several classes without necessarily determining the entire function. Generally, QOC captures a very wide range of problems in quantum query complexity. However, relatively little is known about many of these problems. In this work, we analyze the a subclass of the QOC problems where there is a group structure. That is, suppose the range of the unknown function A is a commutative group G, which induces a commutative group law over the entire function space. Then we consider the case where A is drawn uniformly at random from some subgroup A of the function space. Moreover, there is a homomorpism f on A, and the goal is to determine f(A). This class of problems is very general, and covers several interesting cases, such as oracle evaluation; polynomial interpolation, evaluation, and extrapolation; and parity. These problems are important in the study of message authentication codes in the quantum setting, and may have other applications. We exactly characterize the quantum query complexity of every instance of QOC with group structure in terms of a particular counting problem. That is, we provide an algorithm for this general class of problems whose success probability is determined by the solution to the counting problem, and prove its exact optimality. Unfortunately, solving this counting problem in general is a non-trivial task, and we resort to analyzing special cases. Our bounds unify some existing results, such as the existing oracle evaluation and parity bounds. In the case of polynomial interpolation and evaluation, our bounds give new results for secret sharing and information theoretic message authentication codes in the quantum setting.
In this thesis we address the question, what is the resource, or property, that enables the advantage of quantum computers?The theory of quantum computers dates back to the eighties, so one would think there already is an answer to this question.There are several proposed solutions, but to this date, there is no consensus on an answer.Primarily, the advantage of quantum computers is characterized by a speedup for certain computational problems.This speedup is measured by comparing quantum algorithms with the bestknown classical algorithms.For some algorithms we assume access to an object called oracle.The oracle computes a function, and the complexity of the oracle is of no concern.Instead, we count the number of queries to the oracle needed to solve the problem.Informally, the question we ask using an oracle is: if we can compute this function efficiently, what else could we then compute.However, using oracles while measuring a quantum speedup, we assume access to vastly different oracles residing in different models of computation.For our investigation of the speedup, we introduce a classical simulation framework that imitates quantum algorithms.The simulation suggests that the property enabling the potential quantum speedup is the ability to store, process, and retrieve information in an additional degree of freedom.We then theoretically verified that this is true for all problems that can be efficiently solved with a quantum computer.In parallel to this, we also see that quantum oracles sharply specify the information we can retrieve from the additional degree of freedom, while regular oracles do not.A regular oracle does not even allow for an extra degree of freedom.We conclude that comparing quantum with classical oracle query complexity bounds does not provide conclusive evidence for a quantum advantage.I want to thank Jan-Åke Larsson, without whom this research would not have been possible.If there is any magic in the world, it shows through Jan-Åke's ability to simultaneously be a good supervisor, colleague, and friend.I would also like to thank my co-supervisor Peter Jonsson, for many valuable discussions -not only restricted to theoretical computer science.To my friends and collogues that have challenged me to become better, especially Jonathan Jogenfors
An important theoretical problem in the study of quantum computation, that is also practically relevant in the context of near-term quantum devices, is to understand the computational power of hybrid models, that combine poly-time classical computation with short-depth quantum computation. Here, we consider two such models: CQ_d which captures the scenario of a polynomial-time classical algorithm that queries a d-depth quantum computer many times; and QC_d which is more analogous to measurement-based quantum computation and captures the scenario of a d-depth quantum computer with the ability to change the sequence of gates being applied depending on measurement outcomes processed by a classical computation. Chia, Chung & Lai (STOC 2020) and Coudron & Menda (STOC 2020) showed that these models (with d=log^O(1) (n)) are strictly weaker than BQP (the class of problems solvable by poly-time quantum computation), relative to an oracle, disproving a conjecture of Jozsa in the relativised world. We show that, despite the similarities between CQ_d and QC_d, the two models are incomparable, i.e. CQ_d ⊈ QC_d and QC_d ⊈ CQ_d relative to an oracle. In other words, there exist problems that one model can solve but not the other and vice versa. We do this by considering new oracle problems that capture the distinctions between the two models and by introducing the notion of an intrinsically stochastic oracle, an oracle whose responses are inherently randomised, which is used for our second result. While we leave showing the second separation relative to a standard oracle as an open problem, we believe the notion of stochastic oracles could be of independent interest for studying complexity classes which have resisted separation in the standard oracle model. Our constructions also yield simpler oracle separations between the hybrid models and BQP, compared to earlier works.
An oracle with bias ε is an oracle that answers queries correctly with a probability of at least 1/2+ε. In this paper, we study the upper and lower bounds of quantum query complexity of oracles with bias ε. For general upper bounds, we show that for any quantum algorithm solving some problem with high probability using T queries of perfect quantum oracles, i.e., oracles with ε =1/2, there exists a quantum algorithm solving the same problem, also with high probability, using O(T/ε) queries of the corresponding biased quantum oracles. As corollaries we can show robust quantum algorithms and gaps between biased quantum and classical oracles, e.g., by showing a problem where the quantum query complexity is O(N/ε) but the classical query complexity is lower bounded by Ω(N logN/ε2). For general lower bounds, we generalize Ambainis' quantum adversary argument to biased quantum oracles and obtain the first lower bounds with explicit bias factor. As one of its applications we can provide another proof of the optimality of quantum algorithms for the so-called quantum Goldreich-Levin problem which was proved before by Adcock, et al. using different and more complicated methods.