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Related papers: The Complexity of the Local Hamiltonian Problem

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An important task in quantum physics is the estimation of local quantities for ground states of local Hamiltonians. Recently, [Ambainis, CCC 2014] defined the complexity class P^QMA[log], and motivated its study by showing that the physical…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2020-04-09 Sevag Gharibian , Justin Yirka

The local Hamiltonian (LH) problem is the canonical $\mathsf{QMA}$-complete problem introduced by Kitaev. In this paper, we show its hardness in a very strong sense: we show that the 3-local Hamiltonian problem on $n$ qubits cannot be…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2026-02-17 Nai-Hui Chia , Atsuya Hasegawa , François Le Gall , Yu-Ching Shen

A family of quantum Hamiltonians is said to be universal if any other finite-dimensional Hamiltonian can be approximately encoded within the low-energy space of a Hamiltonian from that family. If the encoding is efficient, universal…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2018-02-21 Stephen Piddock , Ashley Montanaro

Despite having an unnatural definition, $\mathsf{StoqMA}$ plays a central role in Hamiltonian complexity, e.g., in the classification theorem of the complexity of Hamiltonians by Cubitt and Montanaro (SICOMP 2016). Moreover, it lies between…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2026-05-05 Alex B. Grilo , Marios Rozos

Recently it was shown that the so-called guided local Hamiltonian problem -- estimating the smallest eigenvalue of a $k$-local Hamiltonian when provided with a description of a quantum state ('guiding state') that is guaranteed to have…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2024-02-08 Chris Cade , Marten Folkertsma , Jordi Weggemans

Previously, all known variants of the Quantum Satisfiability (QSAT) problem, i.e. deciding whether a $k$-local ($k$-body) Hamiltonian is frustration-free, could be classified as being either in $\mathsf{P}$; or complete for $\mathsf{NP}$,…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-06-10 Ricardo Rivera Cardoso , Alex Meiburg , Daniel Nagaj

A canonical result about satisfiability theory is that the 2-SAT problem can be solved in linear time, despite the NP-hardness of the 3-SAT problem. In the quantum 2-SAT problem, we are given a family of 2-qubit projectors $\Pi_{ij}$ on a…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2016-04-27 Itai Arad , Miklos Santha , Aarthi Sundaram , Shengyu Zhang

We classify two-qubit commuting Hamiltonians in terms of their computational complexity. Suppose one has a two-qubit commuting Hamiltonian H which one can apply to any pair of qubits, starting in a computational basis state. We prove a…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2016-02-15 Adam Bouland , Laura Mančinska , Xue Zhang

The local Hamiltonian (LH) problem, the quantum analog of the classical constraint satisfaction problem, is a cornerstone of quantum computation and complexity theory. It is known to be QMA-complete, indicating that it is challenging even…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2024-11-27 Yukun Zhang , Yusen Wu , Xiao Yuan

We consider the problems of testing and learning an $n$-qubit $k$-local Hamiltonian from queries to its evolution operator with respect the 2-norm of the Pauli spectrum, or equivalently, the normalized Frobenius norm. For testing whether a…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2024-04-10 Francisco Escudero Gutiérrez

Product states, unentangled tensor products of single qubits, are a ubiquitous ansatz in quantum computation, including for state-of-the-art Hamiltonian approximation algorithms. A natural question is whether we should expect to efficiently…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-02-12 John Kallaugher , Ojas Parekh , Kevin Thompson , Yipu Wang , Justin Yirka

In this paper we give an overview of the quantum computational complexity class QMA and a description of known QMA-complete problems to date. Such problems are believed to be difficult to solve, even with a quantum computer, but have the…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2014-04-29 Adam D. Bookatz

A quantum constraint problem is a frustration-free Hamiltonian problem: given a collection of local operators, is there a state that is in the ground state of each operator simultaneously? It has previously been shown that these problems…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2021-07-22 Alex Meiburg

Given a Hamiltonian that is a sum of commuting few-body terms, the commuting Hamiltonian problem is to determine if there exists a quantum state that is the simultaneous eigenstate of all of these terms that minimizes each term…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2012-03-20 Jijiang Yan , Dave Bacon

Quantum Hamiltonian complexity studies computational complexity aspects of local Hamiltonians and ground states; these questions can be viewed as generalizations of classical computational complexity problems related to local constraint…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2015-03-17 Dorit Aharonov , Itai Arad , Zeph Landau , Umesh Vazirani

In this work we consider the ground space connectivity problem for commuting local Hamiltonians. The ground space connectivity problem asks whether it is possible to go from one (efficiently preparable) state to another by applying a…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2017-07-17 David Gosset , Jenish C. Mehta , Thomas Vidick

Suppose we have an n-qubit system, and we are given a collection of local density matrices rho_1,...,rho_m, where each rho_i describes a subset C_i of the qubits. We say that the rho_i are ``consistent'' if there exists some global state…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2007-12-10 Yi-Kai Liu

MA is a class of decision problems for which `yes'-instances have a proof that can be efficiently checked by a classical randomized algorithm. We prove that MA has a natural complete problem which we call the stoquastic k-SAT problem. This…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2007-05-23 Sergey Bravyi , Arvid J. Bessen , Barbara M. Terhal

We investigate the computational complexity of the Local Hamiltonian (LH) problem and the approximation of the Quantum Partition Function (QPF), two central problems in quantum many-body physics and quantum complexity theory. Both problems…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-10-10 Nai-Hui Chia , Yu-Ching Shen

We introduce the quantum complexity class FQMA. This class describes the complexity of generating a quantum state that serves as a witness for a given QMA problem. In a certain sense, FQMA is the quantum analogue of FNP (function problems…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2007-05-23 Dominik Janzing , Pawel Wocjan , Thomas Beth