English

$\mathsf{QAC}^0$ Contains $\mathsf{TC}^0$ (with Many Copies of the Input)

Computational Complexity 2026-01-07 v1 Quantum Physics

Abstract

QAC0\mathsf{QAC}^0 is the class of constant-depth polynomial-size quantum circuits constructed from arbitrary single-qubit gates and generalized Toffoli gates. It is arguably the smallest natural class of constant-depth quantum computation which has not been shown useful for computing any non-trivial Boolean function. Despite this, many attempts to port classical AC0\mathsf{AC}^0 lower bounds to QAC0\mathsf{QAC}^0 have failed. We give one possible explanation of this: QAC0\mathsf{QAC}^0 circuits are significantly more powerful than their classical counterparts. We show the unconditional separation QAC0⊄AC0[p]\mathsf{QAC}^0\not\subset\mathsf{AC}^0[p] for decision problems, which also resolves for the first time whether AC0\mathsf{AC}^0 could be more powerful than QAC0\mathsf{QAC}^0. Moreover, we prove that QAC0\mathsf{QAC}^0 circuits can compute a wide range of Boolean functions if given multiple copies of the input: TC0QAC0NC0\mathsf{TC}^0 \subseteq \mathsf{QAC}^0 \circ \mathsf{NC}^0. Along the way, we introduce an amplitude amplification technique that makes several approximate constant-depth constructions exact.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2601.03243,
  title  = {$\mathsf{QAC}^0$ Contains $\mathsf{TC}^0$ (with Many Copies of the Input)},
  author = {Daniel Grier and Jackson Morris and Kewen Wu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.03243},
  year   = {2026}
}