@article {2448, title = {Quantum algorithm for estimating volumes of convex bodies}, journal = {ACM Transactions on Quantum Computing}, volume = {4}, year = {2023}, month = {4/2023}, chapter = {20}, abstract = {

Estimating the volume of a convex body is a central problem in convex geometry and can be viewed as a continuous version of counting. We present a quantum algorithm that estimates the volume of an n-dimensional convex body within multiplicative error ε using O~(n3.5+n2.5/ε) queries to a membership oracle and O~(n5.5+n4.5/ε) additional arithmetic operations. For comparison, the best known classical algorithm uses O~(n4+n3/ε2) queries and O~(n6+n5/ε2) additional arithmetic operations. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first quantum speedup for volume estimation. Our algorithm is based on a refined framework for speeding up simulated annealing algorithms that might be of independent interest. This framework applies in the setting of \"Chebyshev cooling\", where the solution is expressed as a telescoping product of ratios, each having bounded variance. We develop several novel techniques when implementing our framework, including a theory of continuous-space quantum walks with rigorous bounds on discretization error.

}, url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.03903}, author = {Shouvanik Chakrabarti and Andrew M. Childs and Shih-Han Hung and Tongyang Li and Chunhao Wang and Xiaodi Wu} } @article {3402, title = {Quantum algorithm for linear non-unitary dynamics with near-optimal dependence on all parameters}, year = {2023}, month = {12/6/2023}, abstract = {

We introduce a family of identities that express general linear non-unitary evolution operators as a linear combination of unitary evolution operators, each solving a Hamiltonian simulation problem. This formulation can exponentially enhance the accuracy of the recently introduced linear combination of Hamiltonian simulation (LCHS) method [An, Liu, and Lin, Physical Review Letters, 2023]. For the first time, this approach enables quantum algorithms to solve linear differential equations with both optimal state preparation cost and near-optimal scaling in matrix queries on all parameters.

}, url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.03916}, author = {Dong An and Andrew M. Childs and Lin Lin} } @article {3269, title = {Quantum Algorithms and the Power of Forgetting}, journal = {14th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science Conference (ITCS 2023)}, volume = {251}, year = {2023}, pages = {37:1--37:22}, abstract = {

The so-called welded tree problem provides an example of a black-box problem that can be solved exponentially faster by a quantum walk than by any classical algorithm [Andrew M. Childs et al., 2003]. Given the name of a special entrance vertex, a quantum walk can find another distinguished exit vertex using polynomially many queries, though without finding any particular path from entrance to exit. It has been an open problem for twenty years whether there is an efficient quantum algorithm for finding such a path, or if the path-finding problem is hard even for quantum computers. We show that a natural class of efficient quantum algorithms provably cannot find a path from entrance to exit. Specifically, we consider algorithms that, within each branch of their superposition, always store a set of vertex labels that form a connected subgraph including the entrance, and that only provide these vertex labels as inputs to the oracle. While this does not rule out the possibility of a quantum algorithm that efficiently finds a path, it is unclear how an algorithm could benefit by deviating from this behavior. Our no-go result suggests that, for some problems, quantum algorithms must necessarily forget the path they take to reach a solution in order to outperform classical computation.

}, isbn = {978-3-95977-263-1}, doi = {10.4230/LIPIcs.ITCS.2023.37}, url = {https://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/volltexte/2023/17540}, author = {Andrew M. Childs and Coudron, Matthew and Gilani, Amin Shiraz}, editor = {Tauman Kalai, Yael} } @article {3400, title = {Quantum Algorithms for Simulating Nuclear Effective Field Theories}, year = {2023}, month = {12/8/2023}, abstract = {

Quantum computers offer the potential to simulate nuclear processes that are classically intractable. With the goal of understanding the necessary quantum resources, we employ state-of-the-art Hamiltonian-simulation methods, and conduct a thorough algorithmic analysis, to estimate the qubit and gate costs to simulate low-energy effective field theories (EFTs) of nuclear physics. In particular, within the framework of nuclear lattice EFT, we obtain simulation costs for the leading-order pionless and pionful EFTs. We consider both static pions represented by a one-pion-exchange potential between the nucleons, and dynamical pions represented by relativistic bosonic fields coupled to non-relativistic nucleons. We examine the resource costs for the tasks of time evolution and energy estimation for physically relevant scales. We account for model errors associated with truncating either long-range interactions in the one-pion-exchange EFT or the pionic Hilbert space in the dynamical-pion EFT, and for algorithmic errors associated with product-formula approximations and quantum phase estimation. Our results show that the pionless EFT is the least costly to simulate and the dynamical-pion theory is the costliest. We demonstrate how symmetries of the low-energy nuclear Hamiltonians can be utilized to obtain tighter error bounds on the simulation algorithm. By retaining the locality of nucleonic interactions when mapped to qubits, we achieve reduced circuit depth and substantial parallelization. We further develop new methods to bound the algorithmic error for classes of fermionic Hamiltonians that preserve the number of fermions, and demonstrate that reasonably tight Trotter error bounds can be achieved by explicitly computing nested commutators of Hamiltonian terms. This work highlights the importance of combining physics insights and algorithmic advancement in reducing quantum-simulation costs.

}, url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.05344}, author = {James D. Watson and Jacob Bringewatt and Alexander F. Shaw and Andrew M. Childs and Alexey V. Gorshkov and Zohreh Davoudi} } @article {3150, title = {Quantum Algorithms for Sampling Log-Concave Distributions and Estimating Normalizing Constants}, journal = {Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2022)}, volume = {35}, year = {2022}, month = {10/12/2022}, keywords = {FOS: Computer and information sciences, FOS: Mathematics, FOS: Physical sciences, Machine Learning (cs.LG), Optimization and Control (math.OC), Quantum Physics (quant-ph)}, doi = {10.48550/ARXIV.2210.06539}, url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.06539}, author = {Andrew M. Childs and Li, Tongyang and Liu, Jin-Peng and Wang, Chunhao and Zhang, Ruizhe} } @article {3138, title = {Quantum divide and conquer}, year = {2022}, month = {10/12/2022}, abstract = {

The divide-and-conquer framework, used extensively in classical algorithm design, recursively breaks a problem of size n into smaller subproblems (say, a copies of size n/b each), along with some auxiliary work of cost Caux(n), to give a recurrence relation
C(n)\≤aC(n/b)+Caux(n)
for the classical complexity C(n). We describe a quantum divide-and-conquer framework that, in certain cases, yields an analogous recurrence relation
CQ(n)\≤a\−\−\√CQ(n/b)+O(CauxQ(n))
that characterizes the quantum query complexity. We apply this framework to obtain near-optimal quantum query complexities for various string problems, such as (i) recognizing regular languages; (ii) decision versions of String Rotation and String Suffix; and natural parameterized versions of (iii) Longest Increasing Subsequence and (iv) Longest Common Subsequence.

}, keywords = {Data Structures and Algorithms (cs.DS), FOS: Computer and information sciences, FOS: Physical sciences, Quantum Physics (quant-ph)}, doi = {10.48550/ARXIV.2210.06419}, url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.06419}, author = {Andrew M. Childs and Kothari, Robin and Kovacs-Deak, Matt and Sundaram, Aarthi and Wang, Daochen} } @article {2996, title = {Quantum Routing with Teleportation}, year = {2022}, month = {4/8/2022}, abstract = {

We study the problem of implementing arbitrary permutations of qubits under interaction constraints in quantum systems that allow for arbitrarily fast local operations and classical communication (LOCC). In particular, we show examples of speedups over swap-based and more general unitary routing methods by distributing entanglement and using LOCC to perform quantum teleportation. We further describe an example of an interaction graph for which teleportation gives a logarithmic speedup in the worst-case routing time over swap-based routing. We also study limits on the speedup afforded by quantum teleportation - showing an O(NlogN\−\−\−\−\−\−\−\√) upper bound on the separation in routing time for any interaction graph - and give tighter bounds for some common classes of graphs.

}, keywords = {FOS: Physical sciences, Quantum Physics (quant-ph)}, doi = {10.48550/ARXIV.2204.04185}, url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2204.04185}, author = {Devulapalli, Dhruv and Schoute, Eddie and Bapat, Aniruddha and Andrew M. Childs and Alexey V. Gorshkov} } @article {3187, title = {Quantum simulation of real-space dynamics}, journal = {Quantum}, volume = {6}, year = {2022}, month = {11/8/2022}, pages = {860}, abstract = {

Quantum simulation is a prominent application of quantum computers. While there is extensive previous work on simulating finite-dimensional systems, less is known about quantum algorithms for real-space dynamics. We conduct a systematic study of such algorithms. In particular, we show that the dynamics of a d-dimensional Schr{\"o}dinger equation with η particles can be simulated with gate complexity O~(ηdFpoly(log(g\′/ϵ))), where ϵ is the discretization error, g\′ controls the higher-order derivatives of the wave function, and F measures the time-integrated strength of the potential. Compared to the best previous results, this exponentially improves the dependence on ϵ and g\′ from poly(g\′/ϵ) to poly(log(g\′/ϵ)) and polynomially improves the dependence on T and d, while maintaining best known performance with respect to η. For the case of Coulomb interactions, we give an algorithm using η3(d+η)Tpoly(log(ηdTg\′/(Δϵ)))/Δ one- and two-qubit gates, and another using η3(4d)d/2Tpoly(log(ηdTg\′/(Δϵ)))/Δ one- and two-qubit gates and QRAM operations, where T is the evolution time and the parameter Δ regulates the unbounded Coulomb interaction. We give applications to several computational problems, including faster real-space simulation of quantum chemistry, rigorous analysis of discretization error for simulation of a uniform electron gas, and a quadratic improvement to a quantum algorithm for escaping saddle points in nonconvex optimization.

}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.22331/q-2022-11-17-860}, url = {https://doi.org/10.22331\%2Fq-2022-11-17-860}, author = {Andrew M. Childs and Jiaqi Leng and Tongyang Li and Jin-Peng Liu and Chenyi Zhang} } @article {2633, title = {Quantum exploration algorithms for multi-armed bandits}, journal = {Proceedings of the 35th Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI 2021)}, volume = {35}, year = {2021}, month = {2021}, pages = {10102-10110}, abstract = {

\ Identifying the best arm of a multi-armed bandit is a central problem in bandit optimization. We study a quantum computational version of this problem with coherent oracle access to states encoding the reward probabilities of each arm as quantum amplitudes. Specifically, we show that we can find the best arm with fixed confidence using O~(\∑ni=2Δ\−2i\−\−\−\−\−\−\−\−\√) quantum queries, where Δi represents the difference between the mean reward of the best arm and the ith-best arm. This algorithm, based on variable-time amplitude amplification and estimation, gives a quadratic speedup compared to the best possible classical result. We also prove a matching quantum lower bound (up to poly-logarithmic factors).

}, url = {https://ojs.aaai.org/index.php/AAAI/article/view/17212}, author = {Daochen Wang and Xuchen You and Tongyang Li and Andrew M. Childs} } @article {2878, title = {Quantum Query Complexity with Matrix-Vector Products}, journal = {48th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2021)}, year = {2021}, month = {2/7/2021}, publisher = {Schloss Dagstuhl {\textendash} Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik}, address = {Dagstuhl, Germany}, abstract = {

We study quantum algorithms that learn properties of a matrix using queries that return its action on an input vector. We show that for various problems, including computing the trace, determinant, or rank of a matrix or solving a linear system that it specifies, quantum computers do not provide an asymptotic speedup over classical computation. On the other hand, we show that for some problems, such as computing the parities of rows or columns or deciding if there are two identical rows or columns, quantum computers provide exponential speedup. We demonstrate this by showing equivalence between models that provide matrix-vector products, vector-matrix products, and vector-matrix-vector products, whereas the power of these models can vary significantly for classical computation.

}, isbn = {978-3-95977-195-5}, doi = {10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2021.55}, url = {https://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/volltexte/2021/14124}, author = {Andrew M. Childs and Hung, Shih-Han and Li, Tongyang} } @article {2886, title = {Quantum query complexity with matrix-vector products}, journal = {Proceedings of the 48th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2021), Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics}, volume = {198}, year = {2021}, month = {3/14/2021}, pages = {55:1-55:19}, abstract = {

We study quantum algorithms that learn properties of a matrix using queries that return its action on an input vector. We show that for various problems, including computing the trace, determinant, or rank of a matrix or solving a linear system that it specifies, quantum computers do not provide an asymptotic speedup over classical computation. On the other hand, we show that for some problems, such as computing the parities of rows or columns or deciding if there are two identical rows or columns, quantum computers provide exponential speedup. We demonstrate this by showing equivalence between models that provide matrix-vector products, vector-matrix products, and vector-matrix-vector products, whereas the power of these models can vary significantly for classical computation.

}, doi = {https://arxiv.org/ct?url=https\%3A\%2F\%2Fdx.doi.org\%2F10.4230\%2FLIPIcs.ICALP.2021.55\&v=2de93347}, url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2102.11349}, author = {Andrew M. Childs and Shih-Han Hung and Tongyang Li} } @article {2751, title = {Quantum routing with fast reversals}, journal = {Quantum}, volume = {5}, year = {2021}, month = {8/24/2021}, chapter = {533}, abstract = {

We present methods for implementing arbitrary permutations of qubits under interaction constraints. Our protocols make use of previous methods for rapidly reversing the order of qubits along a path. Given nearest-neighbor interactions on a path of length n, we show that there exists a constant ϵ\≈0.034 such that the quantum routing time is at most (1\−ϵ)n, whereas any swap-based protocol needs at least time n\−1. This represents the first known quantum advantage over swap-based routing methods and also gives improved quantum routing times for realistic architectures such as grids. Furthermore, we show that our algorithm approaches a quantum routing time of 2n/3 in expectation for uniformly random permutations, whereas swap-based protocols require time n asymptotically. Additionally, we consider sparse permutations that route k\≤n qubits and give algorithms with quantum routing time at most n/3+O(k2) on paths and at most 2r/3+O(k2) on general graphs with radius r.

}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.22331/q-2021-08-31-533}, url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.03264}, author = {Aniruddha Bapat and Andrew M. Childs and Alexey V. Gorshkov and Samuel King and Eddie Schoute and Hrishee Shastri} } @article {2207, title = {Quantum algorithms and lower bounds for convex optimization}, journal = {Quantum}, volume = {4}, year = {2020}, month = {12/18/2019}, abstract = {

While recent work suggests that quantum computers can speed up the solution of semidefinite programs, little is known about the quantum complexity of more general convex optimization. We present a quantum algorithm that can optimize a convex function over an n-dimensional convex body using O~(n) queries to oracles that evaluate the objective function and determine membership in the convex body. This represents a quadratic improvement over the best-known classical algorithm. We also study limitations on the power of quantum computers for general convex optimization, showing that it requires Ω~(n\−\−\√) evaluation queries and Ω(n\−\−\√) membership queries.

}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.22331/q-2020-01-13-221}, url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/1809.01731}, author = {Shouvanik Chakrabarti and Andrew M. Childs and Tongyang Li and Xiaodi Wu} } @article {2557, title = {Quantum Coupon Collector}, journal = {Proceedings of the 15th Conference on the Theory of Quantum Computation, Communication and Cryptography (TQC 2020), Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics}, volume = {158}, year = {2020}, month = {2/18/2020}, pages = {10:1-10:17}, abstract = {

We study how efficiently a k-element set S\⊆[n] can be learned from a uniform superposition |S\⟩ of its elements. One can think of |S\⟩=\∑i\∈S|i\⟩/|S|\−\−\−\√ as the quantum version of a uniformly random sample over S, as in the classical analysis of the {\textquoteleft}{\textquoteleft}coupon collector problem.\&$\#$39;\&$\#$39; We show that if k is close to n, then we can learn S using asymptotically fewer quantum samples than random samples. In particular, if there are n\−k=O(1) missing elements then O(k) copies of |S\⟩ suffice, in contrast to the Θ(klogk) random samples needed by a classical coupon collector. On the other hand, if n\−k=Ω(k), then Ω(klogk) quantum samples are~necessary. More generally, we give tight bounds on the number of quantum samples needed for every k and n, and we give efficient quantum learning algorithms. We also give tight bounds in the model where we can additionally reflect through |S\⟩. Finally, we relate coupon collection to a known example separating proper and improper PAC learning that turns out to show no separation in the quantum case.

}, doi = {10.4230/LIPIcs.TQC.2020.10}, url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.07688}, author = {Srinivasan Arunachalam and Aleksandrs Belovs and Andrew M. Childs and Robin Kothari and Ansis Rosmanis and Ronald de Wolf} } @article {2333, title = {Quantum spectral methods for differential equations}, journal = {Commun. Math. Phys. }, volume = {375}, year = {2020}, month = {2/18/2020}, pages = {1427-1457}, abstract = {

Recently developed quantum algorithms address computational challenges in numerical analysis by performing linear algebra in Hilbert space. Such algorithms can produce a quantum state proportional to the solution of a d-dimensional system of linear equations or linear differential equations with complexity poly(logd). While several of these algorithms approximate the solution to within ε with complexity poly(log(1/ε)), no such algorithm was previously known for differential equations with time-dependent coefficients. Here we develop a quantum algorithm for linear ordinary differential equations based on so-called spectral methods, an alternative to finite difference methods that approximates the solution globally. Using this approach, we give a quantum algorithm for time-dependent initial and boundary value problems with complexity poly(logd,log(1/ε)).

}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1007/s00220-020-03699-z}, url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/1901.00961}, author = {Andrew M. Childs and Jin-Peng Liu} } @article {1922, title = {Quantum algorithm for multivariate polynomial interpolation}, journal = {Proceedings of The Royal Society A}, volume = {474}, year = {2018}, month = {2018/01/17}, abstract = {

How many quantum queries are required to determine the coefficients of a degree-d polynomial in n variables? We present and analyze quantum algorithms for this multivariate polynomial interpolation problem over the fields Fq, R, and C. We show that kC and 2kC queries suffice to achieve probability 1 for C and R, respectively, where kC = \⌈ 1 n+1 ( n+d d )\⌉ except for d = 2 and four other special cases. For Fq, we show that \⌈ d n+d ( n+d d )\⌉ queries suffice to achieve probability approaching 1 for large field order q. The classical query complexity of this problem is ( n+d d ), so our result provides a speedup by a factor of n + 1, n+1 2 , and n+d d for C, R, and Fq, respectively. Thus we find a much larger gap between classical and quantum algorithms than the univariate case, where the speedup is by a factor of 2. For the case of Fq, we conjecture that 2kC queries also suffice to achieve probability approaching 1 for large field order q, although we leave this as an open problem.

}, doi = {10.1098/rspa.2017.0480}, url = {http://rspa.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/474/2209/20170480}, author = {Jianxin Chen and Andrew M. Childs and Shih-Han Hung} } @article {1923, title = {Quantum algorithm for linear differential equations with exponentially improved dependence on precision}, journal = {Communications in Mathematical Physics}, volume = {356}, year = {2017}, month = {2017/12/01}, pages = {1057-1081}, abstract = {

We present a quantum algorithm for systems of (possibly inhomogeneous) linear ordinary differential equations with constant coefficients. The algorithm produces a quantum state that is proportional to the solution at a desired final time. The complexity of the algorithm is polynomial in the logarithm of the inverse error, an exponential improvement over previous quantum algorithms for this problem. Our result builds upon recent advances in quantum linear systems algorithms by encoding the simulation into a sparse, well-conditioned linear system that approximates evolution according to the propagator using a Taylor series. Unlike with finite difference methods, our approach does not require additional hypotheses to ensure numerical stability.

}, url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/1701.03684}, author = {Dominic W. Berry and Andrew M. Childs and Aaron Ostrander and Guoming Wang} } @article {1605, title = {Quantum algorithm for systems of linear equations with exponentially improved dependence on precision}, journal = {SIAM Journal on Computing}, volume = {46}, year = {2017}, month = {2017/12/21}, pages = {1920-1950}, abstract = {

Harrow, Hassidim, and Lloyd showed that for a suitably specified N\×N matrix A and N-dimensional vector b⃗ , there is a quantum algorithm that outputs a quantum state proportional to the solution of the linear system of equations Ax⃗ =b⃗ . If A is sparse and well-conditioned, their algorithm runs in time poly(logN,1/ϵ), where ϵ is the desired precision in the output state. We improve this to an algorithm whose running time is polynomial in log(1/ϵ), exponentially improving the dependence on precision while keeping essentially the same dependence on other parameters. Our algorithm is based on a general technique for implementing any operator with a suitable Fourier or Chebyshev series representation. This allows us to bypass the quantum phase estimation algorithm, whose dependence on ϵ is prohibitive.

}, doi = {10.1137/16M1087072}, url = {http://epubs.siam.org/doi/10.1137/16M1087072}, author = {Andrew M. Childs and Robin Kothari and Rolando D. Somma} } @article {1231, title = {Quantum computation of discrete logarithms in semigroups}, journal = {Journal of Mathematical Cryptology}, volume = {8}, year = {2014}, month = {2014/01/1}, abstract = { We describe an efficient quantum algorithm for computing discrete logarithms in semigroups using Shor{\textquoteright}s algorithms for period finding and discrete log as subroutines. Thus proposed cryptosystems based on the presumed hardness of discrete logarithms in semigroups are insecure against quantum attacks. In contrast, we show that some generalizations of the discrete log problem are hard in semigroups despite being easy in groups. We relate a shifted version of the discrete log problem in semigroups to the dihedral hidden subgroup problem, and we show that the constructive membership problem with respect to $k \ge 2$ generators in a black-box abelian semigroup of order $N$ requires $\tilde \Theta(N^{\frac{1}{2}-\frac{1}{2k}})$ quantum queries. }, doi = {10.1515/jmc-2013-0038}, url = {http://arxiv.org/abs/1310.6238v2}, author = {Andrew M. Childs and G{\'a}bor Ivanyos} } @article {1222, title = {The quantum query complexity of read-many formulas}, journal = {Lecture Notes in Computer Science}, volume = {7501}, year = {2012}, month = {2012/09/10}, pages = {337-348}, abstract = { The quantum query complexity of evaluating any read-once formula with n black-box input bits is Theta(sqrt(n)). However, the corresponding problem for read-many formulas (i.e., formulas in which the inputs have fanout) is not well understood. Although the optimal read-once formula evaluation algorithm can be applied to any formula, it can be suboptimal if the inputs have large fanout. We give an algorithm for evaluating any formula with n inputs, size S, and G gates using O(min{n, sqrt{S}, n^{1/2} G^{1/4}}) quantum queries. Furthermore, we show that this algorithm is optimal, since for any n,S,G there exists a formula with n inputs, size at most S, and at most G gates that requires Omega(min{n, sqrt{S}, n^{1/2} G^{1/4}}) queries. We also show that the algorithm remains nearly optimal for circuits of any particular depth k >= 3, and we give a linear-size circuit of depth 2 that requires Omega (n^{5/9}) queries. Applications of these results include a Omega (n^{19/18}) lower bound for Boolean matrix product verification, a nearly tight characterization of the quantum query complexity of evaluating constant-depth circuits with bounded fanout, new formula gate count lower bounds for several functions including PARITY, and a construction of an AC^0 circuit of linear size that can only be evaluated by a formula with Omega(n^{2-epsilon}) gates. }, doi = {10.1007/978-3-642-33090-2_30}, url = {http://arxiv.org/abs/1112.0548v1}, author = {Andrew M. Childs and Shelby Kimmel and Robin Kothari} } @article {1224, title = {Quantum query complexity of minor-closed graph properties}, journal = {Proc. 28th Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science (STACS 2011), Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics}, volume = {9}, year = {2011}, month = {2011/01/01}, pages = {661-672}, abstract = { We study the quantum query complexity of minor-closed graph properties, which include such problems as determining whether an $n$-vertex graph is planar, is a forest, or does not contain a path of a given length. We show that most minor-closed properties---those that cannot be characterized by a finite set of forbidden subgraphs---have quantum query complexity \Theta(n^{3/2}). To establish this, we prove an adversary lower bound using a detailed analysis of the structure of minor-closed properties with respect to forbidden topological minors and forbidden subgraphs. On the other hand, we show that minor-closed properties (and more generally, sparse graph properties) that can be characterized by finitely many forbidden subgraphs can be solved strictly faster, in o(n^{3/2}) queries. Our algorithms are a novel application of the quantum walk search framework and give improved upper bounds for several subgraph-finding problems. }, doi = {10.4230/LIPIcs.STACS.2011.661}, url = {http://arxiv.org/abs/1011.1443v2}, author = {Andrew M. Childs and Robin Kothari} } @article {1218, title = {Quantum algorithms for algebraic problems}, journal = {Reviews of Modern Physics}, volume = {82}, year = {2010}, month = {2010/1/15}, pages = {1 - 52}, abstract = { Quantum computers can execute algorithms that dramatically outperform classical computation. As the best-known example, Shor discovered an efficient quantum algorithm for factoring integers, whereas factoring appears to be difficult for classical computers. Understanding what other computational problems can be solved significantly faster using quantum algorithms is one of the major challenges in the theory of quantum computation, and such algorithms motivate the formidable task of building a large-scale quantum computer. This article reviews the current state of quantum algorithms, focusing on algorithms with superpolynomial speedup over classical computation, and in particular, on problems with an algebraic flavor. }, doi = {10.1103/RevModPhys.82.1}, url = {http://arxiv.org/abs/0812.0380v1}, author = {Andrew M. Childs and Wim van Dam} } @article {1243, title = {Quantum property testing for bounded-degree graphs}, journal = {Proc. RANDOM}, year = {2010}, month = {2010/12/14}, pages = {365-376}, abstract = { We study quantum algorithms for testing bipartiteness and expansion of bounded-degree graphs. We give quantum algorithms that solve these problems in time O(N^(1/3)), beating the Omega(sqrt(N)) classical lower bound. For testing expansion, we also prove an Omega(N^(1/4)) quantum query lower bound, thus ruling out the possibility of an exponential quantum speedup. Our quantum algorithms follow from a combination of classical property testing techniques due to Goldreich and Ron, derandomization, and the quantum algorithm for element distinctness. The quantum lower bound is obtained by the polynomial method, using novel algebraic techniques and combinatorial analysis to accommodate the graph structure. }, doi = {10.1007/978-3-642-22935-0_31}, url = {http://arxiv.org/abs/1012.3174v3}, author = {Andris Ambainis and Andrew M. Childs and Yi-Kai Liu} } @article {1256, title = {The quantum query complexity of certification}, year = {2009}, month = {2009/03/06}, abstract = { We study the quantum query complexity of finding a certificate for a d-regular, k-level balanced NAND formula. Up to logarithmic factors, we show that the query complexity is Theta(d^{(k+1)/2}) for 0-certificates, and Theta(d^{k/2}) for 1-certificates. In particular, this shows that the zero-error quantum query complexity of evaluating such formulas is O(d^{(k+1)/2}) (again neglecting a logarithmic factor). Our lower bound relies on the fact that the quantum adversary method obeys a direct sum theorem. }, url = {http://arxiv.org/abs/0903.1291v2}, author = {Andris Ambainis and Andrew M. Childs and Fran{\c c}ois Le Gall and Seiichiro Tani} } @article {1257, title = {Quantum algorithms for hidden nonlinear structures}, year = {2007}, month = {2007/05/21}, abstract = { Attempts to find new quantum algorithms that outperform classical computation have focused primarily on the nonabelian hidden subgroup problem, which generalizes the central problem solved by Shor{\textquoteright}s factoring algorithm. We suggest an alternative generalization, namely to problems of finding hidden nonlinear structures over finite fields. We give examples of two such problems that can be solved efficiently by a quantum computer, but not by a classical computer. We also give some positive results on the quantum query complexity of finding hidden nonlinear structures. }, doi = {10.1109/FOCS.2007.18}, url = {http://arxiv.org/abs/0705.2784v1}, author = {Andrew M. Childs and Leonard J. Schulman and Umesh V. Vazirani} } @article {1215, title = {Quantum algorithm for a generalized hidden shift problem}, year = {2005}, month = {2005/07/19}, abstract = { Consider the following generalized hidden shift problem: given a function f on {0,...,M-1} x Z_N satisfying f(b,x)=f(b+1,x+s) for b=0,1,...,M-2, find the unknown shift s in Z_N. For M=N, this problem is an instance of the abelian hidden subgroup problem, which can be solved efficiently on a quantum computer, whereas for M=2, it is equivalent to the dihedral hidden subgroup problem, for which no efficient algorithm is known. For any fixed positive epsilon, we give an efficient (i.e., poly(log N)) quantum algorithm for this problem provided M > N^epsilon. The algorithm is based on the "pretty good measurement" and uses H. Lenstra{\textquoteright}s (classical) algorithm for integer programming as a subroutine. }, url = {http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0507190v1}, author = {Andrew M. Childs and Wim van Dam} } @article {1216, title = {On the quantum hardness of solving isomorphism problems as nonabelian hidden shift problems }, year = {2005}, month = {2005/10/25}, abstract = { We consider an approach to deciding isomorphism of rigid n-vertex graphs (and related isomorphism problems) by solving a nonabelian hidden shift problem on a quantum computer using the standard method. Such an approach is arguably more natural than viewing the problem as a hidden subgroup problem. We prove that the hidden shift approach to rigid graph isomorphism is hard in two senses. First, we prove that Omega(n) copies of the hidden shift states are necessary to solve the problem (whereas O(n log n) copies are sufficient). Second, we prove that if one is restricted to single-register measurements, an exponential number of hidden shift states are required. }, url = {http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0510185v1}, author = {Andrew M. Childs and Pawel Wocjan} } @article {1212, title = {Quantum algorithms for subset finding}, year = {2003}, month = {2003/11/06}, abstract = { Recently, Ambainis gave an O(N^(2/3))-query quantum walk algorithm for element distinctness, and more generally, an O(N^(L/(L+1)))-query algorithm for finding L equal numbers. We point out that this algorithm actually solves a much more general problem, the problem of finding a subset of size L that satisfies any given property. We review the algorithm and give a considerably simplified analysis of its query complexity. We present several applications, including two algorithms for the problem of finding an L-clique in an N-vertex graph. One of these algorithms uses O(N^(2L/(L+1))) edge queries, and the other uses \tilde{O}(N^((5L-2)/(2L+4))), which is an improvement for L <= 5. The latter algorithm generalizes a recent result of Magniez, Santha, and Szegedy, who considered the case L=3 (finding a triangle). We also pose two open problems regarding continuous time quantum walk and lower bounds. }, url = {http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0311038v2}, author = {Andrew M. Childs and Jason M. Eisenberg} } @article {1262, title = {Quantum search by measurement}, journal = {Physical Review A}, volume = {66}, year = {2002}, month = {2002/9/23}, abstract = { We propose a quantum algorithm for solving combinatorial search problems that uses only a sequence of measurements. The algorithm is similar in spirit to quantum computation by adiabatic evolution, in that the goal is to remain in the ground state of a time-varying Hamiltonian. Indeed, we show that the running times of the two algorithms are closely related. We also show how to achieve the quadratic speedup for Grover{\textquoteright}s unstructured search problem with only two measurements. Finally, we discuss some similarities and differences between the adiabatic and measurement algorithms. }, doi = {10.1103/PhysRevA.66.032314}, url = {http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0204013v1}, author = {Andrew M. Childs and Enrico Deotto and Edward Farhi and Jeffrey Goldstone and Sam Gutmann and Andrew J. Landahl} } @article {1236, title = {Quantum information and precision measurement}, journal = {Journal of Modern Optics}, volume = {47}, year = {2000}, month = {1999/04/07}, pages = {155 - 176}, abstract = { We describe some applications of quantum information theory to the analysis of quantum limits on measurement sensitivity. A measurement of a weak force acting on a quantum system is a determination of a classical parameter appearing in the master equation that governs the evolution of the system; limitations on measurement accuracy arise because it is not possible to distinguish perfectly among the different possible values of this parameter. Tools developed in the study of quantum information and computation can be exploited to improve the precision of physics experiments; examples include superdense coding, fast database search, and the quantum Fourier transform. }, doi = {10.1080/09500340008244034}, url = {http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9904021v2}, author = {Andrew M. Childs and John Preskill and Joseph Renes} }