English

Critically damped quantum search

Quantum Physics 2015-05-13 v1

Abstract

Although measurement and unitary processes can accomplish any quantum evolution in principle, thinking in terms of dissipation and damping can be powerful. We propose a modification of Grover's algorithm in which the idea of damping plays a natural role. Remarkably, we have found that there is a critical damping value that divides between the quantum O(N)O(\sqrt{N}) and classical O(N) search regimes. In addition, by allowing the damping to vary in a fashion we describe, one obtains a fixed-point quantum search algorithm in which ignorance of the number of targets increases the number of oracle queries only by a factor of 1.5.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0810.0470,
  title  = {Critically damped quantum search},
  author = {Ari Mizel},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0810.0470},
  year   = {2015}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-21T11:26:47.506Z