English

On the quantum time complexity of divide and conquer

Quantum Physics 2025-12-03 v1 Data Structures and Algorithms

Abstract

We initiate a systematic study of the time complexity of quantum divide and conquer algorithms for classical problems. We establish generic conditions under which search and minimization problems with classical divide and conquer algorithms are amenable to quantum speedup and apply these theorems to an array of problems involving strings, integers, and geometric objects. They include LONGEST DISTINCT SUBSTRING, KLEE'S COVERAGE, several optimization problems on stock transactions, and k-INCREASING SUBSEQUENCE. For most of these results, our quantum time upper bound matches the quantum query lower bound for the problem, up to polylogarithmic factors.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2311.16401,
  title  = {On the quantum time complexity of divide and conquer},
  author = {Jonathan Allcock and Jinge Bao and Aleksandrs Belovs and Troy Lee and Miklos Santha},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2311.16401},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

48 pages, accepted to QIP 2024

R2 v1 2026-06-28T13:33:32.637Z