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Hamoon Mousavi

Publications and source records attributed to Hamoon Mousavi.

14 recordsLinked to original sources

A Quantum Unique Games Conjecture

After the NP-hardness of computational problems such as 3SAT and MaxCut was established, a natural next step was to explore whether these problems remain hard to approximate. While the quantum extensions of some of these problems are known to be hard-indeed undecidable-their inapproximability remains largely unresolved. In this work, we introduce definitions for the quantum extensions of Label-Cover and Unique-Label-Cover. We show that these problems play a similarly crucial role in studying the inapproximability of quantum constraint satisfaction problems as they do in the classical setting.

quant-ph

Approximation algorithms for noncommutative CSPs

Noncommutative constraint satisfaction problems (NC-CSPs) are higher-dimensional operator extensions of classical CSPs. Despite their significance in quantum information, their approximability remains largely unexplored. A notable example of a noncommutative CSP that is not solvable in polynomial time is NC-Max-$3$-Cut. We present a $0.864$-approximation algorithm for this problem. Our approach extends to a broader class of both classical and noncommutative CSPs. We introduce three key concepts: approximate isometry, relative distribution, and $\ast$-anticommutation, which may be of independent interest.

quant-ph

Nonlocal Games, Compression Theorems, and the Arithmetical Hierarchy

We investigate the connection between the complexity of nonlocal games and the arithmetical hierarchy, a classification of languages according to the complexity of arithmetical formulas defining them. It was recently shown by Ji, Natarajan, Vidick, Wright and Yuen that deciding whether the (finite-dimensional) quantum value of a nonlocal game is $1$ or at most $\frac{1}{2}$ is complete for the class $\Sigma_1$ (i.e., $\mathsf{RE}$). A result of Slofstra implies that deciding whether the commuting operator value of a nonlocal game is equal to $1$ is complete for the class $\Pi_1$ (i.e., $\mathsf{coRE}$). We prove that deciding whether the quantum value of a two-player nonlocal game is exactly equal to $1$ is complete for $\Pi_2$; this class is in the second level of the arithmetical hierarchy and corresponds to formulas of the form "$\forall x \, \exists y \, \phi(x,y)$". This shows that exactly computing the quantum value is strictly harder than approximating it, and also strictly harder than computing the commuting operator value (either exactly or approximately). We explain how results about the complexity of nonlocal games all follow in a unified manner from a technique known as compression. At the core of our $\Pi_2$-completeness result is a new "gapless" compression theorem that holds for both quantum and commuting operator strategies. Our compression theorem yields as a byproduct an alternative proof of Slofstra's result that the set of quantum correlations is not closed. We also show how a "gap-preserving" compression theorem for commuting operator strategies would imply that approximating the commuting operator value is complete for $\Pi_1$.

quant-ph

Synchronous Values of Games

We study synchronous values of games, especially synchronous games. It is known that a synchronous game has a perfect strategy if and only if it has a perfect synchronous strategy. However, we give examples of synchronous games, in particular graph colouring games, with synchronous value that is strictly smaller than their ordinary value. Thus, the optimal strategy for a synchronous game need not be synchronous. We derive a formula for the synchronous value of an XOR game as an optimization problem over a spectrahedron involving a matrix related to the cost matrix. We give an example of a game such that the synchronous value of repeated products of the game is strictly increasing. We show that the synchronous quantum bias of the XOR of two XOR games is not multiplicative. Finally, we derive geometric and algebraic conditions that a set of projections that yields the synchronous value of a game must satisfy.

quant-ph

A generalization of CHSH and the algebraic structure of optimal strategies

Self-testing has been a rich area of study in quantum information theory. It allows an experimenter to interact classically with a black box quantum system and to test that a specific entangled state was present and a specific set of measurements were performed. Recently, self-testing has been central to high-profile results in complexity theory as seen in the work on entangled games PCP of Natarajan and Vidick (FOCS 2018), iterated compression by Fitzsimons et al. (STOC 2019), and NEEXP in MIP* due to Natarajan and Wright (FOCS 2019). In this work, we introduce an algebraic generalization of CHSH by viewing it as a linear constraint system (LCS) game, exhibiting self-testing properties that are qualitatively different. These provide the first example of non-local games that self-test non-Pauli operators resolving an open questions posed by Coladangelo and Stark (QIP 2017). Our games also provide a self-test for states other than the maximally entangled state, and hence resolves the open question posed by Cleve and Mittal (ICALP 2012). Additionally, our games have 1 bit question and $\log n$ bit answer lengths making them suitable candidates for complexity theoretic application. This work is the first step towards a general theory of self-testing arbitrary groups. In order to obtain our results, we exploit connections between sum of squares proofs, non-commutative ring theory, and the Gowers-Hatami theorem from approximate representation theory. A crucial part of our analysis is to introduce a sum of squares framework that generalizes the \emph{solution group} of Cleve, Liu, and Slofstra (Journal of Mathematical Physics 2017) to the non-pseudo-telepathic regime. Finally, we give the first example of a game that is not a self-test. Our results suggest a richer landscape of self-testing phenomena than previously considered.

quant-ph

Automatic Theorem Proving in Walnut

Walnut is a software package that implements a mechanical decision procedure for deciding certain combinatorial properties of some special words referred to as automatic words or automatic sequences. Walnut is written in Java and is open source. It is licensed under GNU General Public License.

cs.FL

On the complexity of zero gap MIP*

The class $\mathsf{MIP}^*$ is the set of languages decidable by multiprover interactive proofs with quantum entangled provers. It was recently shown by Ji, Natarajan, Vidick, Wright and Yuen that $\mathsf{MIP}^*$ is equal to $\mathsf{RE}$, the set of recursively enumerable languages. In particular this shows that the complexity of approximating the quantum value of a non-local game $G$ is equivalent to the complexity of the Halting problem. In this paper we investigate the complexity of deciding whether the quantum value of a non-local game $G$ is exactly $1$. This problem corresponds to a complexity class that we call zero gap $\mathsf{MIP}^*$, denoted by $\mathsf{MIP}^*_0$, where there is no promise gap between the verifier's acceptance probabilities in the YES and NO cases. We prove that $\mathsf{MIP}^*_0$ extends beyond the first level of the arithmetical hierarchy (which includes $\mathsf{RE}$ and its complement $\mathsf{coRE}$), and in fact is equal to $Π_2^0$, the class of languages that can be decided by quantified formulas of the form $\forall y \, \exists z \, R(x,y,z)$. Combined with the previously known result that $\mathsf{MIP}^{co}_0$ (the commuting operator variant of $\mathsf{MIP}^*_0$) is equal to $\mathsf{coRE}$, our result further highlights the fascinating connection between various models of quantum multiprover interactive proofs and different classes in computability theory.

quant-ph

Lower Bounds on Regular Expression Size

We introduce linear programs encoding regular expressions of finite languages. We show that, given a language, the optimum value of the associated linear program is a lower bound on the size of any regular expression of the language. Moreover we show that any regular expression can be turned into a dual feasible solution with an objective value that is equal to the size of the regular expression. For binomial languages we can relax the associated linear program using duality theorem. We use this relaxation to prove lower bounds on the size of regular expressions of binomial and threshold languages.

cs.FL

Decision Algorithms for Fibonacci-Automatic Words, with Applications to Pattern Avoidance

We implement a decision procedure for answering questions about a class of infinite words that might be called (for lack of a better name) "Fibonacci-automatic". This class includes, for example, the famous Fibonacci word f = 01001010..., the fixed point of the morphism 0 -> 01 and 1 -> 0. We then recover many results about the Fibonacci word from the literature (and improve some of them), such as assertions about the occurrences in f of squares, cubes, palindromes, and so forth. As an application of our method we prove a new result: there exists an aperiodic infinite binary word avoiding the pattern x x x^R. This is the first avoidability result concerning a nonuniform morphism proven purely mechanically.

cs.FL

Mechanical Proofs of Properties of the Tribonacci Word

We implement a decision procedure for answering questions about a class of infinite words that might be called (for lack of a better name) "Tribonacci-automatic". This class includes, for example, the famous Tribonacci word T = 0102010010202 ..., the fixed point of the morphism 0 -> 01, 1 -> 02, 2 -> 0. We use it to reprove some old results about the Tribonacci word from the literature, such as assertions about the occurrences in T of squares, cubes, palindromes, and so forth. We also obtain some new results.

cs.FL

Shortest Repetition-Free Words Accepted by Automata

We consider the following problem: given that a finite automaton $M$ of $N$ states accepts at least one $k$-power-free (resp., overlap-free) word, what is the length of the shortest such word accepted? We give upper and lower bounds which, unfortunately, are widely separated.

cs.FL

Repetition Avoidance in Circular Factors

We consider the following novel variation on a classical avoidance problem from combinatorics on words: instead of avoiding repetitions in all factors of a word, we avoid repetitions in all factors where each individual factor is considered as a "circular word", i.e., the end of the word wraps around to the beginning. We determine the best possible avoidance exponent for alphabet size 2 and 3, and provide a lower bound for larger alphabets.

cs.FL

On the Number of Unbordered Factors

We illustrate a general technique for enumerating factors of k-automatic sequences by proving a conjecture on the number f(n) of unbordered factors of the Thue-Morse sequence. We show that f(n) <= n for n >= 4 and that f(n) = n infinitely often. We also give examples of automatic sequences having exactly 2 unbordered factors of every length.

cs.FL

Filtrations of Formal Languages by Arithmetic Progressions

A filtration of a formal language L by a sequence s maps L to the set of words formed by taking the letters of words of L indexed only by s. We consider the languages resulting from filtering by all arithmetic progressions. If L is regular, it is easy to see that only finitely many distinct languages result. By contrast, there exist CFL's that give infinitely many distinct languages as a result. We use our technique to show that the operation diag, which extracts the diagonal of words of square length arranged in a square array, preserves regularity but does not preserve context-freeness.

cs.FL