Quantum Search of Spatial Regions

  • Authors:
  • Scott Aaronson;Andris Ambainis

  • Affiliations:
  • -;-

  • Venue:
  • FOCS '03 Proceedings of the 44th Annual IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science
  • Year:
  • 2003

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Abstract

Can Grover隆's quantum search algorithm speed up search of a physical region 驴 for example a 2-D grid of size \sqrt n\times \sqrt n? The problem is that \sqrt n time seems tobe needed for each query, just to move amplitude across the grid. Here we show that this problem can be surmounted, refuting a claim to the contrary by Benio. In particular, we show how to search a d-dimensional hypercube in time 0(\sqrt n ) for d \geqslant 3, or 0(\sqrt {n\log ^3 n)} for d = 2. More generally, we introduce a model of quantum query complexity on graphs, motivated by fundamental physical limits on information storage, particularly the holographic principle from black hole thermodynamics. Our results in this model include almost-tight upper and lower bounds for many search tasks; a generalized algorithm that works for any graph with good expansion properties, not just hypercubes; and relationships among several notions of `locality驴 for unitary matrices acting on graphs. As an application of our results, we give an 0(\sqrt {n)}-qubit communication protocol for the disjointness problem, which improves an upper bound of H驴yer and de Wolf and matches a lower bound of Razborov.