English

How to Construct Random Unitaries

Quantum Physics 2025-05-22 v3 Computational Complexity Computation and Language Mathematical Physics math.MP

Abstract

The existence of pseudorandom unitaries (PRUs) -- efficient quantum circuits that are computationally indistinguishable from Haar-random unitaries -- has been a central open question, with significant implications for cryptography, complexity theory, and fundamental physics. In this work, we close this question by proving that PRUs exist, assuming that any quantum-secure one-way function exists. We establish this result for both (1) the standard notion of PRUs, which are secure against any efficient adversary that makes queries to the unitary UU, and (2) a stronger notion of PRUs, which are secure even against adversaries that can query both the unitary UU and its inverse UU^\dagger. In the process, we prove that any algorithm that makes queries to a Haar-random unitary can be efficiently simulated on a quantum computer, up to inverse-exponential trace distance.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2410.10116,
  title  = {How to Construct Random Unitaries},
  author = {Fermi Ma and Hsin-Yuan Huang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2410.10116},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

76 pages; moved grant acknowledgments to acknowledgments section