No Arabic abstract
Almost all of the most successful quantum algorithms discovered to date exploit the ability of the Fourier transform to recover subgroup structure of functions, especially periodicity. The fact that Fourier transforms can also be used to capture shift structure has received far less attention in the context of quantum computation. In this paper, we present three examples of ``unknown shift problems that can be solved efficiently on a quantum computer using the quantum Fourier transform. We also define the hidden coset problem, which generalizes the hidden shift problem and the hidden subgroup problem. This framework provides a unified way of viewing the ability of the Fourier transform to capture subgroup and shift structure.
Quantum computers can execute algorithms that dramatically outperform classical computation. As the best-known example, Shor discovered an efficient quantum algorithm for factoring integers, whereas factoring appears to be difficult for classical computers. Understanding what other computational problems can be solved significantly faster using quantum algorithms is one of the major challenges in the theory of quantum computation, and such algorithms motivate the formidable task of building a large-scale quantum computer. This article reviews the current state of quantum algorithms, focusing on algorithms with superpolynomial speedup over classical computation, and in particular, on problems with an algebraic flavor.
In this paper, we study quantum query complexity of the following rather natural tripartite generalisations (in the spirit of the 3-sum problem) of the hidden shift and the set equality problems, which we call the 3-shift-sum and the 3-matching-sum problems. The 3-shift-sum problem is as follows: given a table of $3times n$ elements, is it possible to circularly shift its rows so that the sum of the elements in each column becomes zero? It is promised that, if this is not the case, then no 3 elements in the table sum up to zero. The 3-matching-sum problem is defined similarly, but it is allowed to arbitrarily permute elements within each row. For these problems, we prove lower bounds of $Omega(n^{1/3})$ and $Omega(sqrt n)$, respectively. The second lower bound is tight. The lower bounds are proven by a novel application of the dual learning graph framework and by using representation-theoretic tools.
We show that nonlinear problems including nonlinear partial differential equations can be efficiently solved by variational quantum computing. We achieve this by utilizing multiple copies of variational quantum states to treat nonlinearities efficiently and by introducing tensor networks as a programming paradigm. The key concepts of the algorithm are demonstrated for the nonlinear Schr{o}dinger equation as a canonical example. We numerically show that the variational quantum ansatz can be exponentially more efficient than matrix product states and present experimental proof-of-principle results obtained on an IBM Q device.
We discuss classical algorithms for approximating the largest eigenvalue of quantum spin and fermionic Hamiltonians based on semidefinite programming relaxation methods. First, we consider traceless $2$-local Hamiltonians $H$ describing a system of $n$ qubits. We give an efficient algorithm that outputs a separable state whose energy is at least $lambda_{max}/O(log n)$, where $lambda_{max}$ is the maximum eigenvalue of $H$. We also give a simplified proof of a theorem due to Lieb that establishes the existence of a separable state with energy at least $lambda_{max}/9$. Secondly, we consider a system of $n$ fermionic modes and traceless Hamiltonians composed of quadratic and quartic fermionic operators. We give an efficient algorithm that outputs a fermionic Gaussian state whose energy is at least $lambda_{max}/O(nlog n)$. Finally, we show that Gaussian states can vastly outperform Slater determinant states commonly used in the Hartree-Fock method. We give a simple family of Hamiltonians for which Gaussian states and Slater determinants approximate $lambda_{max}$ within a fraction $1-O(n^{-1})$ and $O(n^{-1})$ respectively.
Polynomial eigenvalue problems (PEPs) arise in a variety of science and engineering applications, and many breakthroughs in the development of classical algorithms to solve PEPs have been made in the past decades. Here we attempt to solve PEPs in a quantum computer. Firstly, for generalized eigenvalue problems (GEPs) $Ax = lambda Bx$ with $A,B$ symmetric, and $B$ positive definite, we give a quantum algorithm based on block-encoding and quantum phase estimation. In a more general case when $B$ is invertible, $B^{-1}A$ is diagonalizable and all the eigenvalues are real, we propose a quantum algorithm based on the Fourier spectral method to solve ordinary differential equations (ODEs). The inputs of our algorithms can be any desired states, and the outputs are superpositions of the eigenpairs. The complexities are polylog in the matrix size and linear in the precision. The dependence on precision is optimal. Secondly, we show that when $B$ is singular, any quantum algorithm uses at least $Omega(sqrt{n})$ queries to compute the eigenvalues, where $n$ is the matrix size. Thirdly, based on the linearization method and the connection between PEPs and higher-order ODEs, we provide two quantum algorithms to solve PEPs by extending the quantum algorithm for GEPs. We also give detailed complexity analysis of the algorithm for two special types of quadratic eigenvalue problems that are important in practice. Finally, under an extra assumption, we propose a quantum algorithm to solve PEPs when the eigenvalues are complex.