arXiv subjects

Ronald de Wolf

Publications and source records attributed to Ronald de Wolf.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2015

Efficient Quantum Algorithms for (Gapped) Group Testing and Junta Testing

In the $k$-junta testing problem, a tester has to efficiently decide whether a given function $f:\{0,1\}^n\rightarrow \{0,1\}$ is a $k$-junta (i.e., depends on at most $k$ of its input bits) or is $ε$-far from any $k$-junta. Our main result is a quantum algorithm for this problem with query complexity $\tilde O(\sqrt{k/ε})$ and time complexity $\tilde O(n\sqrt{k/ε})$. This quadratically improves over the query complexity of the previous best quantum junta tester, due to Atıcı and Servedio. Our tester is based on a new quantum algorithm for a gapped version of the combinatorial group testing problem, with an up to quartic improvement over the query complexity of the best classical algorithm. For our upper bound on the time complexity we give a near-linear time implementation of a shallow variant of the quantum Fourier transform over the symmetric group, similar to the Schur-Weyl transform. We also prove a lower bound of $Ω(k^{1/3})$ queries for junta-testing (for constant $ε$).

cs.CC↗

arXiv2015

Exponential Lower Bounds for Polytopes in Combinatorial Optimization

We solve a 20-year old problem posed by Yannakakis and prove that there exists no polynomial-size linear program (LP) whose associated polytope projects to the traveling salesman polytope, even if the LP is not required to be symmetric. Moreover, we prove that this holds also for the cut polytope and the stable set polytope. These results were discovered through a new connection that we make between one-way quantum communication protocols and semidefinite programming reformulations of LPs.

math.CO↗

arXiv2015

Optimal parallel quantum query algorithms

We study the complexity of quantum query algorithms that make p queries in parallel in each timestep. This model is in part motivated by the fact that decoherence times of qubits are typically small, so it makes sense to parallelize quantum algorithms as much as possible. We show tight bounds for a number of problems, specifically Theta((n/p)^{2/3}) p-parallel queries for element distinctness and Theta((n/p)^{k/(k+1)} for k-sum. Our upper bounds are obtained by parallelized quantum walk algorithms, and our lower bounds are based on a relatively small modification of the adversary lower bound method, combined with recent results of Belovs et al. on learning graphs. We also prove some general bounds, in particular that quantum and classical p-parallel complexity are polynomially related for all total functions f when p is small compared to f's block sensitivity.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2014

Query complexity in expectation

We study the query complexity of computing a function f:{0,1}^n-->R_+ in expectation. This requires the algorithm on input x to output a nonnegative random variable whose expectation equals f(x), using as few queries to the input x as possible. We exactly characterize both the randomized and the quantum query complexity by two polynomial degrees, the nonnegative literal degree and the sum-of-squares degree, respectively. We observe that the quantum complexity can be unboundedly smaller than the classical complexity for some functions, but can be at most polynomially smaller for functions with range {0,1}. These query complexities relate to (and are motivated by) the extension complexity of polytopes. The linear extension complexity of a polytope is characterized by the randomized communication complexity of computing its slack matrix in expectation, and the semidefinite (psd) extension complexity is characterized by the analogous quantum model. Since query complexity can be used to upper bound communication complexity of related functions, we can derive some upper bounds on psd extension complexity by constructing efficient quantum query algorithms. As an example we give an exponentially-close entrywise approximation of the slack matrix of the perfect matching polytope with psd-rank only 2^{n^{1/2+epsilon}}. Finally, we show there is a precise sense in which randomized/quantum query complexity in expectation corresponds to the Sherali-Adams and Lasserre hierarchies, respectively.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2014

Rational approximations and quantum algorithms with postselection

We study the close connection between rational functions that approximate a given Boolean function, and quantum algorithms that compute the same function using postselection. We show that the minimal degree of the former equals (up to a factor of 2) the minimal query complexity of the latter. We give optimal (up to constant factors) quantum algorithms with postselection for the Majority function, slightly improving upon an earlier algorithm of Aaronson. Finally we show how Newman's classic theorem about low-degree rational approximation of the absolute-value function follows from these algorithms.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2014

Some upper and lower bounds on PSD-rank

Positive semidefinite rank (PSD-rank) is a relatively new quantity with applications to combinatorial optimization and communication complexity. We first study several basic properties of PSD-rank, and then develop new techniques for showing lower bounds on the PSD-rank. All of these bounds are based on viewing a positive semidefinite factorization of a matrix $M$ as a quantum communication protocol. These lower bounds depend on the entries of the matrix and not only on its support (the zero/nonzero pattern), overcoming a limitation of some previous techniques. We compare these new lower bounds with known bounds, and give examples where the new ones are better. As an application we determine the PSD-rank of (approximations of) some common matrices.

cs.CC↗

arXiv2013

The non-adaptive query complexity of testing k-parities

We prove tight bounds of Theta(k log k) queries for non-adaptively testing whether a function f:{0,1}^n -> {0,1} is a k-parity or far from any k-parity. The lower bound combines a recent method of Blais, Brody and Matulef [BBM11] to get lower bounds for testing from communication complexity with an Omega(k \log k) lower bound for the one-way communication complexity of k-disjointness.

cs.CC↗

arXiv2013

How Low Can Approximate Degree and Quantum Query Complexity be for Total Boolean Functions?

It has long been known that any Boolean function that depends on n input variables has both degree and exact quantum query complexity of Omega(log n), and that this bound is achieved for some functions. In this paper we study the case of approximate degree and bounded-error quantum query complexity. We show that for these measures the correct lower bound is Omega(log n / loglog n), and we exhibit quantum algorithms for two functions where this bound is achieved.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2012

Fooling One-Sided Quantum Protocols

We use the venerable "fooling set" method to prove new lower bounds on the quantum communication complexity of various functions. Let f:X x Y-->{0,1} be a Boolean function, fool^1(f) its maximal fooling set size among 1-inputs, Q_1^*(f) its one-sided error quantum communication complexity with prior entanglement, and NQ(f) its nondeterministic quantum communication complexity (without prior entanglement; this model is trivial with shared randomness or entanglement). Our main results are the following, where logs are to base 2: * If the maximal fooling set is "upper triangular" (which is for instance the case for the equality, disjointness, and greater-than functions), then we have Q_1^*(f)>=(1/2)log fool^1(f) - 1/2, which is essentially optimal by superdense coding. No super-constant lower bound for equality seems to follow from earlier techniques. * For all f we have Q_1^*(f)>=(1/4)log fool^1(f) - 1/2, which is optimal up to a factor of 2. * NQ(f)>=log \fool^1(f)/2 + 1. We do not know if the factor 1/2 is needed in this result, but it cannot be replaced by 1: we give an example where NQ(f)~0.613 log fool^1(f).

quant-ph↗

arXiv2012

Optimal quantum query bounds for almost all Boolean functions

We show that almost all n-bit Boolean functions have bounded-error quantum query complexity at least n/2, up to lower-order terms. This improves over an earlier n/4 lower bound of Ambainis, and shows that van Dam's oracle interrogation is essentially optimal for almost all functions. Our proof uses the fact that the acceptance probability of a T-query algorithm can be written as the sum of squares of degree-T polynomials.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2012

New bounds on the classical and quantum communication complexity of some graph properties

We study the communication complexity of a number of graph properties where the edges of the graph $G$ are distributed between Alice and Bob (i.e., each receives some of the edges as input). Our main results are: * An Omega(n) lower bound on the quantum communication complexity of deciding whether an n-vertex graph G is connected, nearly matching the trivial classical upper bound of O(n log n) bits of communication. * A deterministic upper bound of O(n^{3/2}log n) bits for deciding if a bipartite graph contains a perfect matching, and a quantum lower bound of Omega(n) for this problem. * A Theta(n^2) bound for the randomized communication complexity of deciding if a graph has an Eulerian tour, and a Theta(n^{3/2}) bound for the quantum communication complexity of this problem. The first two quantum lower bounds are obtained by exhibiting a reduction from the n-bit Inner Product problem to these graph problems, which solves an open question of Babai, Frankl and Simon. The third quantum lower bound comes from recent results about the quantum communication complexity of composed functions. We also obtain essentially tight bounds for the quantum communication complexity of a few other problems, such as deciding if G is triangle-free, or if G is bipartite, as well as computing the determinant of a distributed matrix.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2011

Quantum Proofs for Classical Theorems

Alongside the development of quantum algorithms and quantum complexity theory in recent years, quantum techniques have also proved instrumental in obtaining results in classical (non-quantum) areas. In this paper we survey these results and the quantum toolbox they use.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2011

Uniform Approximation by (Quantum) Polynomials

We show that quantum algorithms can be used to re-prove a classical theorem in approximation theory, Jackson's Theorem, which gives a nearly-optimal quantitative version of Weierstrass's Theorem on uniform approximation of continuous functions by polynomials. We provide two proofs, based respectively on quantum counting and on quantum phase estimation.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2010

Better Non-Local Games from Hidden Matching

We construct a non-locality game that can be won with certainty by a quantum strategy using log n shared EPR-pairs, while any classical strategy has winning probability at most 1/2+O(log n/sqrt{n}). This improves upon a recent result of Junge et al. in a number of ways.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2010

New Results on Quantum Property Testing

We present several new examples of speed-ups obtainable by quantum algorithms in the context of property testing. First, motivated by sampling algorithms, we consider probability distributions given in the form of an oracle $f:[n]\to[m]$. Here the probability $\PP_f(j)$ of an outcome $j\in[m]$ is the fraction of its domain that $f$ maps to $j$. We give quantum algorithms for testing whether two such distributions are identical or $ε$-far in $L_1$-norm. Recently, Bravyi, Hassidim, and Harrow \cite{BHH10} showed that if $\PP_f$ and $\PP_g$ are both unknown (i.e., given by oracles $f$ and $g$), then this testing can be done in roughly $\sqrt{m}$ quantum queries to the functions. We consider the case where the second distribution is known, and show that testing can be done with roughly $m^{1/3}$ quantum queries, which we prove to be essentially optimal. In contrast, it is known that classical testing algorithms need about $m^{2/3}$ queries in the unknown-unknown case and about $\sqrt{m}$ queries in the known-unknown case. Based on this result, we also reduce the query complexity of graph isomorphism testers with quantum oracle access. While those examples provide polynomial quantum speed-ups, our third example gives a much larger improvement (constant quantum queries vs polynomial classical queries) for the problem of testing periodicity, based on Shor's algorithm and a modification of a classical lower bound by Lachish and Newman \cite{lachish&newman:periodicity}. This provides an alternative to a recent constant-vs-polynomial speed-up due to Aaronson \cite{aaronson:bqpph}.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2010

Efficient and Error-Correcting Data Structures for Membership and Polynomial Evaluation

We construct efficient data structures that are resilient against a constant fraction of adversarial noise. Our model requires that the decoder answers most queries correctly with high probability and for the remaining queries, the decoder with high probability either answers correctly or declares "don't know." Furthermore, if there is no noise on the data structure, it answers all queries correctly with high probability. Our model is the common generalization of a model proposed recently by de Wolf and the notion of "relaxed locally decodable codes" developed in the PCP literature. We measure the efficiency of a data structure in terms of its length, measured by the number of bits in its representation, and query-answering time, measured by the number of bit-probes to the (possibly corrupted) representation. In this work, we study two data structure problems: membership and polynomial evaluation. We show that these two problems have constructions that are simultaneously efficient and error-correcting.

cs.DS↗

arXiv2009

Better Gap-Hamming Lower Bounds via Better Round Elimination

Gap Hamming Distance is a well-studied problem in communication complexity, in which Alice and Bob have to decide whether the Hamming distance between their respective n-bit inputs is less than n/2-sqrt(n) or greater than n/2+sqrt(n). We show that every k-round bounded-error communication protocol for this problem sends a message of at least Omega(n/(k^2\log k)) bits. This lower bound has an exponentially better dependence on the number of rounds than the previous best bound, due to Brody and Chakrabarti. Our communication lower bound implies strong space lower bounds on algorithms for a number of data stream computations, such as approximating the number of distinct elements in a stream. Subsequent to this result, the bound has been improved by some of us to the optimal Omega(n), independent of k, by using different techniques.

cs.CC↗

arXiv2009

Non-locality and Communication Complexity

Quantum information processing is the emerging field that defines and realizes computing devices that make use of quantum mechanical principles, like the superposition principle, entanglement, and interference. In this review we study the information counterpart of computing. The abstract form of the distributed computing setting is called communication complexity. It studies the amount of information, in terms of bits or in our case qubits, that two spatially separated computing devices need to exchange in order to perform some computational task. Surprisingly, quantum mechanics can be used to obtain dramatic advantages for such tasks. We review the area of quantum communication complexity, and show how it connects the foundational physics questions regarding non-locality with those of communication complexity studied in theoretical computer science. The first examples exhibiting the advantage of the use of qubits in distributed information-processing tasks were based on non-locality tests. However, by now the field has produced strong and interesting quantum protocols and algorithms of its own that demonstrate that entanglement, although it cannot be used to replace communication, can be used to reduce the communication exponentially. In turn, these new advances yield a new outlook on the foundations of physics, and could even yield new proposals for experiments that test the foundations of physics.

quant-ph↗