English

Can graph properties have exponential quantum speedup?

Quantum Physics 2020-01-29 v1 Computational Complexity Combinatorics

Abstract

Quantum computers can sometimes exponentially outperform classical ones, but only for problems with sufficient structure. While it is well known that query problems with full permutation symmetry can have at most polynomial quantum speedup -- even for partial functions -- it is unclear how far this condition must be relaxed to enable exponential speedup. In particular, it is natural to ask whether exponential speedup is possible for (partial) graph properties, in which the input describes a graph and the output can only depend on its isomorphism class. We show that the answer to this question depends strongly on the input model. In the adjacency matrix model, we prove that the bounded-error randomized query complexity RR of any graph property P\mathcal{P} has R(P)=O(Q(P)6)R(\mathcal{P}) = O(Q(\mathcal{P})^{6}), where QQ is the bounded-error quantum query complexity. This negatively resolves an open question of Montanaro and de Wolf in the adjacency matrix model. More generally, we prove R(P)=O(Q(P)3l)R(\mathcal{P}) = O(Q(\mathcal{P})^{3l}) for any ll-uniform hypergraph property P\mathcal{P} in the adjacency matrix model. In direct contrast, in the adjacency list model for bounded-degree graphs, we exhibit a promise problem that shows an exponential separation between the randomized and quantum query complexities.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2001.10520,
  title  = {Can graph properties have exponential quantum speedup?},
  author = {Andrew M. Childs and Daochen Wang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2001.10520},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

11 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-23T13:23:17.851Z