On the uselessness of quantum queries (Q433109)

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On the uselessness of quantum queries
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    On the uselessness of quantum queries (English)
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    13 July 2012
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    The paper treats the classical and quantum query complexity of oracles. These provide the values of an unknown function in response to queries and the task is to determine a property of the function. In the introduction, some easy-to-follow examples of useful and useless queries are presented. Afterwards, classical ``uselessness'' of \(k\) queries to the oracle is strictly defined: Knowledge of any \(k\) function values does not change the probability of the function to belong to a particular property class. The quantum generalization is straightforward: \(k\) quantum queries are useless if afterwards no measurement (described by a generalized POVM) changes the probability of the function to have the sought-after property. For example, in Deutsch's problem, a single classical query is useless whereas a single quantum query may be useful. The main result of the paper is that when \(2k\) classical queries are useless, also \(k\) quantum queries are, which gives a lower bound to useful quantum queries as \(k+1\). The paper provides three examples (a parity problem, a generalization of Deutsch's problem, and a polynomial interpolation problem) and of course the proof of the main theorem. The authors suggest to use their theorem for obtaining a lower bound of quantum query complexities. Although a bit technical, the paper is easy to read and recommendable for researchers interested in quantum query complexity with background in quantum algorithms.
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    quantum algorithms
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    oracle query complexity
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    computational complexity
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