0000000000778637

AUTHOR

Robert Spalek

Any AND-OR Formula of Size N Can Be Evaluated in Time $N^{1/2+o(1)}$ on a Quantum Computer

Consider the problem of evaluating an AND-OR formula on an $N$-bit black-box input. We present a bounded-error quantum algorithm that solves this problem in time $N^{1/2+o(1)}$. In particular, approximately balanced formulas can be evaluated in $O(\sqrt{N})$ queries, which is optimal. The idea of the algorithm is to apply phase estimation to a discrete-time quantum walk on a weighted tree whose spectrum encodes the value of the formula.

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Adversary Lower Bound for the k-sum Problem

We prove a tight quantum query lower bound $\Omega(n^{k/(k+1)})$ for the problem of deciding whether there exist $k$ numbers among $n$ that sum up to a prescribed number, provided that the alphabet size is sufficiently large. This is an extended and simplified version of an earlier preprint of one of the authors arXiv:1204.5074.

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