arXiv subjects

John Watrous

Publications and source records attributed to John Watrous.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2008

Distinguishing quantum operations having few Kraus operators

Entanglement is sometimes helpful in distinguishing between quantum operations, as differences between quantum operations can become magnified when their inputs are entangled with auxiliary systems. Bounds on the dimension of the auxiliary system needed to optimally distinguish quantum operations are known in several situations. For instance, the dimension of the auxiliary space never needs to exceed the dimension of the input space of the operations for optimal distinguishability, while no auxiliary system whatsoever is needed to optimally distinguish unitary operations. Another bound, which follows from work of R. Timoney, is that optimal distinguishability is always possible when the dimension of the auxiliary system is twice the number of operators needed to express the difference between the quantum operations in Kraus form. This paper provides an alternate proof of this fact that is based on concepts and tools that are familiar to quantum information theorists.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2007

Toward a general theory of quantum games

We study properties of quantum strategies, which are complete specifications of a given party's actions in any multiple-round interaction involving the exchange of quantum information with one or more other parties. In particular, we focus on a representation of quantum strategies that generalizes the Choi-Jamiołkowski representation of quantum operations. This new representation associates with each strategy a positive semidefinite operator acting only on the tensor product of its input and output spaces. Various facts about such representations are established, and two applications are discussed: the first is a new and conceptually simple proof of Kitaev's lower bound for strong coin-flipping, and the second is a proof of the exact characterization QRG = EXP of the class of problems having quantum refereed games.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2005

Zero-knowledge against quantum attacks

This paper proves that several interactive proof systems are zero-knowledge against quantum attacks. This includes a few well-known classical zero-knowledge proof systems as well as quantum interactive proof systems for the complexity class HVQSZK, which comprises all problems having "honest verifier" quantum statistical zero-knowledge proofs. It is also proved that zero-knowledge proofs for every language in NP exist that are secure against quantum attacks, assuming the existence of quantum computationally concealing commitment schemes. Previously no non-trivial proof systems were known to be zero-knowledge against quantum attacks, except in restricted settings such as the honest-verifier and common reference string models. This paper therefore establishes for the first time that true zero-knowledge is indeed possible in the presence of quantum information and computation.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2005

Quantum Arthur-Merlin Games

This paper studies quantum Arthur-Merlin games, which are Arthur-Merlin games in which Arthur and Merlin can perform quantum computations and Merlin can send Arthur quantum information. As in the classical case, messages from Arthur to Merlin are restricted to be strings of uniformly generated random bits. It is proved that for one-message quantum Arthur-Merlin games, which correspond to the complexity class QMA, completeness and soundness errors can be reduced exponentially without increasing the length of Merlin's message. Previous constructions for reducing error required a polynomial increase in the length of Merlin's message. Applications of this fact include a proof that logarithmic length quantum certificates yield no increase in power over BQP and a simple proof that QMA is contained in PP. Other facts that are proved include the equivalence of three (or more) message quantum Arthur-Merlin games with ordinary quantum interactive proof systems and some basic properties concerning two-message quantum Arthur-Merlin games.

cs.CC↗

arXiv2005

Bipartite subspaces having no LOCC-distinguishable bases

It is proved that there exist subspaces of bipartite tensor product spaces that have no orthonormal bases that can be perfectly distinguished by means of LOCC protocols. A corollary of this fact is that there exist quantum channels having sub-optimal classical capacity even when the receiver may communicate classically with a third party that represents the channel's environment.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2004

Quantum Interactive Proofs with Competing Provers

This paper studies quantum refereed games, which are quantum interactive proof systems with two competing provers: one that tries to convince the verifier to accept and the other that tries to convince the verifier to reject. We prove that every language having an ordinary quantum interactive proof system also has a quantum refereed game in which the verifier exchanges just one round of messages with each prover. A key part of our proof is the fact that there exists a single quantum measurement that reliably distinguishes between mixed states chosen arbitrarily from disjoint convex sets having large minimal trace distance from one another. We also show how to reduce the probability of error for some classes of quantum refereed games.

cs.CC↗

arXiv2004

Notes on super-operator norms induced by Schatten norms

This paper considers basic properties of super-operator norms induced by Schatten p-norms. Such super-operator norms arise in various contexts in the study of quantum information. It is proved that for completely positive super-operators, the value of any such norm is achieved by a positive semidefinite input, answering a question recently posed by King and Ruskai. However, for any choice of p, there exists a super-operator that is the difference of two completely positive, trace-preserving super-operators such that the value of the super-operator norm is not even achieved on a Hermitian input operator. Also considered are the properties of the above norms for super-operators tensored with the identity super-operator.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2004

On the hardness of distinguishing mixed-state quantum computations

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

cs.CC↗

arXiv2004

Many copies may be required for entanglement distillation

A mixed quantum state shared between two parties is said to be distillable if, by means of a protocol involving only local quantum operations and classical communication, the two parties can transform some number of copies of that state into a single shared pair of qubits having high fidelity with a maximally entangled state state. In this paper it is proved that there exist states that are distillable, but for which an arbitrarily large number of copies is required before any distillation procedure can produce a shared pair of qubits with even a small amount of entanglement. Specifically, for every positive integer n there exists a state that is distillable, but given n or fewer copies of that state every distillation procedure outputting a single shared pair of qubits will output those qubits in a separable state. Essentially all previous examples of states proved to be distillable were such that some distillation procedure could output an entangled pair of qubits given a single copy of the state in question.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2003

Continuous-time quantum walks on the symmetric group

In this paper we study continuous-time quantum walks on Cayley graphs of the symmetric group, and prove various facts concerning such walks that demonstrate significant differences from their classical analogues. In particular, we show that for several natural choices for generating sets, these quantum walks do not have uniform limiting distributions, and are effectively blind to large areas of the graphs due to destructive interference.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2002

One-dimensional quantum walks with absorbing boundaries

In this paper we analyze the behavior of quantum random walks. In particular we present several new results for the absorption probabilities in systems with both one and two absorbing walls for the one-dimensional case. We compute these probabilites both by employing generating functions and by use of an eigenfunction approach. The generating function method is used to determine some simple properties of the walks we consider, but appears to have limitations. The eigenfunction approach works by relating the problem of absorption to a unitary problem that has identical dynamics inside a certain domain, and can be used to compute several additional interesting properties, such as the time dependence of absorption. The eigenfunction method has the distinct advantage that it can be extended to arbitrary dimensionality. We outline the solution of the absorption probability problem of a (d-1)-dimensional wall in a d-dimensional space.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2002

Quantum statistical zero-knowledge

In this paper we propose a definition for (honest verifier) quantum statistical zero-knowledge interactive proof systems and study the resulting complexity class, which we denote QSZK. We prove several facts regarding this class that establish close connections between classical statistical zero-knowledge and our definition for quantum statistical zero-knowledge, and give some insight regarding the effect of this zero-knowledge restriction on quantum interactive proof systems.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2001

Sharp Quantum vs. Classical Query Complexity Separations

We obtain the strongest separation between quantum and classical query complexity known to date -- specifically, we define a black-box problem that requires exponentially many queries in the classical bounded-error case, but can be solved exactly in the quantum case with a single query (and a polynomial number of auxiliary operations). The problem is simple to define and the quantum algorithm solving it is also simple when described in terms of certain quantum Fourier transforms (QFTs) that have natural properties with respect to the algebraic structures of finite fields. These QFTs may be of independent interest, and we also investigate generalizations of them to noncommutative finite rings.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2001

Quantum fingerprinting

Classical fingerprinting associates with each string a shorter string (its fingerprint), such that, with high probability, any two distinct strings can be distinguished by comparing their fingerprints alone. The fingerprints can be exponentially smaller than the original strings if the parties preparing the fingerprints share a random key, but not if they only have access to uncorrelated random sources. In this paper we show that fingerprints consisting of quantum information can be made exponentially smaller than the original strings without any correlations or entanglement between the parties: we give a scheme where the quantum fingerprints are exponentially shorter than the original strings and we give a test that distinguishes any two unknown quantum fingerprints with high probability. Our scheme implies an exponential quantum/classical gap for the equality problem in the simultaneous message passing model of communication complexity. We optimize several aspects of our scheme.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2001

Quantum algorithms for solvable groups

In this paper we give a polynomial-time quantum algorithm for computing orders of solvable groups. Several other problems, such as testing membership in solvable groups, testing equality of subgroups in a given solvable group, and testing normality of a subgroup in a given solvable group, reduce to computing orders of solvable groups and therefore admit polynomial-time quantum algorithms as well. Our algorithm works in the setting of black-box groups, wherein none of these problems can be computed classically in polynomial time. As an important byproduct, our algorithm is able to produce a pure quantum state that is uniform over the elements in any chosen subgroup of a solvable group, which yields a natural way to apply existing quantum algorithms to factor groups of solvable groups.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2000

Succinct quantum proofs for properties of finite groups

In this paper we consider a quantum computational variant of nondeterminism based on the notion of a quantum proof, which is a quantum state that plays a role similar to a certificate in an NP-type proof. Specifically, we consider quantum proofs for properties of black-box groups, which are finite groups whose elements are encoded as strings of a given length and whose group operations are performed by a group oracle. We prove that for an arbitrary group oracle there exist succinct (polynomial-length) quantum proofs for the Group Non-Membership problem that can be checked with small error in polynomial time on a quantum computer. Classically this is impossible--it is proved that there exists a group oracle relative to which this problem does not have succinct proofs that can be checked classically with bounded error in polynomial time (i.e., the problem is not in MA relative to the group oracle constructed). By considering a certain subproblem of the Group Non-Membership problem we obtain a simple proof that there exists an oracle relative to which BQP is not contained in MA. Finally, we show that quantum proofs for non-membership and classical proofs for various other group properties can be combined to yield succinct quantum proofs for other group properties not having succinct proofs in the classical setting, such as verifying that a number divides the order of a group and verifying that a group is not a simple group.

cs.CC↗

arXiv2000

Fast parallel circuits for the quantum Fourier transform

We give new bounds on the circuit complexity of the quantum Fourier transform (QFT). We give an upper bound of O(log n + log log (1/epsilon)) on the circuit depth for computing an approximation of the QFT with respect to the modulus 2^n with error bounded by epsilon. Thus, even for exponentially small error, our circuits have depth O(log n). The best previous depth bound was O(n), even for approximations with constant error. Moreover, our circuits have size O(n log (n/epsilon)). We also give an upper bound of O(n (log n)^2 log log n) on the circuit size of the exact QFT modulo 2^n, for which the best previous bound was O(n^2). As an application of the above depth bound, we show that Shor's factoring algorithm may be based on quantum circuits with depth only O(log n) and polynomial-size, in combination with classical polynomial-time pre- and post-processing. In the language of computational complexity, this implies that factoring is in the complexity class ZPP^BQNC, where BQNC is the class of problems computable with bounded-error probability by quantum circuits with poly-logarithmic depth and polynomial size. Finally, we prove an Omega(log n) lower bound on the depth complexity of approximations of the QFT with constant error. This implies that the above upper bound is asymptotically optimal (for a reasonable range of values of epsilon).

quant-ph↗

arXiv1999

On quantum and classical space-bounded processes with algebraic transition amplitudes

We define a class of stochastic processes based on evolutions and measurements of quantum systems, and consider the complexity of predicting their long-term behavior. It is shown that a very general class of decision problems regarding these stochastic processes can be efficiently solved classically in the space-bounded case. The following corollaries are implied by our main result: (1) Any space O(s) uniform family of quantum circuits acting on s qubits and consisting of unitary gates and measurement gates defined in a typical way by matrices of algebraic numbers can be simulated by an unbounded error space O(s) ordinary (i.e., fair-coin flipping) probabilistic Turing machine, and hence by space O(s) uniform classical (deterministic) circuits of depth O(s^2) and size 2^(O(s)). The quantum circuits are not required to operate with bounded error and may have depth exponential in s. (2) Any (unbounded error) quantum Turing machine running in space s, having arbitrary algebraic transition amplitudes, allowing unrestricted measurements during its computation, and having no restrictions on running time can be simulated by an unbounded error space O(s) ordinary probabilistic Turing machine, and hence deterministically in space O(s^2).

cs.CC↗