In some scenarios there are ways of conveying information with many fewer, even exponentially fewer, qubits than possible classically. Moreover, some of these methods have a very simple structure-they involve only few message exchanges between the communicating parties. It is therefore natural to ask whether every classical protocol may be transformed to a "simpler" quantum protocol-one that has similar efficiency, but uses fewer message exchanges. We show that for any constant k, there is a problem such that its k+1 message classical communication complexity is exponentially smaller than its k message quantum communication complexity. This, in particular, proves a round hierarchy theorem for quantum communication complexity, and implies, via a simple reduction, an Omega(N1k/) lower bound for k message quantum protocols for Set Disjointness for constant k. Enroute, we prove information-theoretic lemmas, and define a related measure of correlation, the informational distance, that we believe may be of significance in other contexts as well
One of the most intriguing facts about communication using quantum states is that these states cannot be used to transmit more classical bits than the number of qubits used, yet there are ways of conveying information with exponentially fewer qubits than possible classically. Moreover, these methods have a very simple structure---they involve little interaction between the communicating parties. We look more closely at the ways in which information encoded in quantum states may be manipulated, and consider the question as to whether every classical protocol may be transformed to a ``simpler'' quantum protocol of similar efficiency. By a simpler protocol, we mean a protocol that uses fewer message exchanges. We show that for any constant k, there is a problem such that its k+1 message classical communication complexity is exponentially smaller than its k message quantum communication complexity, thus answering the above question in the negative. Our result builds on two primitives, local transitions in bi-partite states (based on previous work) and average encoding which may be of significance in other applications as well.
We show lower bounds in the multi-party quantum communication complexity model. In this model, there are t parties where the ith party has input X/sub i/ /spl sube/ [n]. These parties communicate with each other by transmitting qubits to determine with high probability the value of some function F of their combined input (X/sub 1/,...,X/sub t/). We consider the class of Boolean valued functions whose value depends only on X/sub 1/ /spl cap/.../spl cap/ X/sub t/; that is, for each F in this class there is an f/sub F/ : 2/sup [n]/ /spl rarr/ {0,1}, such that F(X/sub 1/,...,X/sub t/) = f/sub F/(X/sub 1/ /spl cap/.../spl cap/ X/sub t/). We show that the t-party k-round communication complexity of F is /spl Omega/(s/sub m/(f/sub F/)/(k/sup 2/)), where s/sub m/(f/sub F/) stands for the monotone sensitivity of f/sub F/' and is defined by s/sub m/(f/sub F/) = /sup /spl utri// max/sub S/spl sube//[n] |{i : f/sub F/(S /spl cup/ {i}) /spl ne/ f/sub F/(S)}|. For two-party quantum communication protocols for the set disjointness problem, this implies that the two parties must exchange /spl Omega/(n/k/sup 2/) qubits. An upper bound of O(n/k) can be derived from the O(/spl radic/n) upper bound due to S. Aaronson and A. Ambainis (2003). For k = 1, our lower bound matches the /spl Omega/(n) lower bound observed by H. Buhrman and R. de Wolf (2001) (based on a result of A. Nayak (1999)), and for 2 /spl les/ k /spl Lt/ n/sup 1/4 /, improves the lower bound of /spl Omega/(/spl radic/n) shown by A. Razborov (2002). For protocols with no restrictions on the number of rounds, we can conclude that the two parties must exchange /spl Omega/(n/sup 1/3/) qubits. This, however, falls short of the optimal /spl Omega/ (/spl radic/n) lower bound shown by A. Razborov (2002). Our result is obtained by adapting to the quantum setting the elegant information-theoretic arguments of Z. Bar-Yossef et al. (2002). Using this method we can show similar lower bounds for the L/sub /spl infin// function considered in Z. Bar-Yossef et al. (2002).
We define a new notion of information cost for quantum protocols, and a corresponding notion of quantum information complexity for bipartite quantum channels, and then investigate the properties of such quantities. These are the fully quantum generalizations of the analogous quantities for bipartite classical functions that have found many applications recently, in particular for proving communication complexity lower bounds. Our definition is strongly tied to the quantum state redistribution task. Previous attempts have been made to define such a quantity for quantum protocols, with particular applications in mind; our notion differs from these in many respects. First, it directly provides a lower bound on the quantum communication cost, independent of the number of rounds of the underlying protocol. Secondly, we provide an operational interpretation for quantum information complexity: we show that it is exactly equal to the amortized quantum communication complexity of a bipartite channel on a given state. This generalizes a result of Braverman and Rao to quantum protocols, and even strengthens the classical result in a bounded round scenario. Also, this provides an analogue of the Schumacher source compression theorem for interactive quantum protocols, and answers a question raised by Braverman. We also discuss some potential applications to quantum communication complexity lower bounds by specializing our definition for classical functions and inputs. Building on work of Jain, Radhakrishnan and Sen, we provide new evidence suggesting that the bounded round quantum communication complexity of the disjointness function is Ω(n/M + M), for M-message protocols. This would match the best known upper bound.
We prove a near optimal round-communication tradeoff for the two-party quantum communication complexity of disjointness. For protocols with r rounds, we prove a lower bound of Omega(n/r) on the communication required for computing disjointness of input size n, which is optimal up to logarithmic factors. The previous best lower bound was Omega(n/r̂2) due to Jain, Radhakrishnan and Sen. Along the way, we develop several tools for quantum information complexity, one of which is a lower bound for quantum information complexity in terms of the generalized discrepancy method. As a corollary, we get that the quantum communication complexity of any boolean function f is at most 2 ̂O(QIC(f)), where QIC(f) is the prior-free quantum information complexity of f (with error 1/3).
We study the complexity of quantum decomposable randomized encodings (QDRE). We establish a bi-directional connection between the QDRE model and the communication complexity model of quantum private simultaneous message protocols (QPSM), where classical communication is free, and quantum communication is the primary complexity measure. We show the following upper and lower bounds. (1) For every quantum channel mapping
n to
m qubits, we give a QPSM protocol with quantum communication
m, using exponential pre-shared entanglement. In particular, constant-output channels have
O(1) quantum communication, and classical-output channels require no quantum communication. (2) With
O(n) pre-shared entanglement, every one-qubit-output channel has an
O(n)-quantum-communication QPSM protocol. Conversely, there exists a channel and a constant
c>0 for which any protocol with at most
cn pre-shared entanglement requires
Ω(n) quantum communication. (3) In contrast, we identify a structured class of quantum channels, Clifford-induced channels, for which there exist QPSM protocols with
O(n) pre-shared entangled qubits and only
O(1) quantum communication complexity. Through our connection, we obtain analogous upper and lower bounds on the quantum encoding size of QDRE. Our results show that the amount of pre-shared entanglement plays a central role in quantum encoding size and quantum communication complexity.