English

Complexity of Simon's problem in classical sense

Computational Complexity 2022-11-04 v1 Data Structures and Algorithms

Abstract

Simon's problem is a standard example of a problem that is exponential in classical sense, while it admits a polynomial solution in quantum computing. It is about a function ff for which it is given that a unique non-zero vector ss exists for which f(x)=f(xs)f(x) = f(x \oplus s) for all xx, where \oplus is the exclusive or operator. The goal is to find ss. The exponential lower bound for the classical sense assumes that ff only admits black box access. In this paper we investigate classical complexity when ff is given by a standard representation like a circuit. We focus on finding the vector space of all vectors ss for which f(x)=f(xs)f(x) = f(x \oplus s) for all xx, for any given ff. Two main results are: (1) if ff is given by any circuit, then checking whether this vector space contains a non-zero element is NP-hard, and (2) if ff is given by any ordered BDD, then a basis of this vector space can be computed in polynomial time.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2211.01776,
  title  = {Complexity of Simon's problem in classical sense},
  author = {Hans Zantema},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2211.01776},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

10 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-28T05:05:51.983Z