Mathematical models of quantum computation

Abstract

In this paper, we introduce two mathematical models of realistic quantum computation. First, we develop a theory of bulk quantum computation such as NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance) quantum computation. For this purpose, we define bulk quantum Turing machine (BQTM for short) as a model of bulk quantum computation. Then, we define complexity classes EBQP, BBQP and ZBQP as counterparts of the quantum complexity classes EQP, BQP and ZQP, respectively, and show that EBQP=EQP, BBQP=BQP and ZBQP=ZQP. This implies that BQTMs are polynomially related to ordinary QTMs as long as they are used to solve decision problems. We also show that these two types of QTMs are also polynomially related when they solve a function problem which has a unique solution. Furthermore, we show that BQTMs can solve certain instances of NP-complete problems efficiently.On the other hand, in the theory of quantum computation, only feed-forward quantum circuits are investigated, because a quantum circuit represents a sequence of applications of time evolution operators. But, if a quantum computer is a physical device where the gates are interactions controlled by a current computer such as laser pulses on trapped ions, NMR and most implementation proposals, it is natural to describe quantum circuits as ones that have feedback loops if we want to visualize the total amount of the necessary hardware. For this purpose, we introduce a quantum recurrent circuit model, which is a quantum circuit with feedback loops. Let C be a quantum recurrent circuit which solves the satisfiability problem for a blackbox Boolean function including n variables with probability at least 1/2. And let s be the size of C (i.e. the number of the gates in C) and t be the number of iterations that is needed for C to solve the satisfiability problem. Then, we show that, for those quantum recurrent circuits, the minimum value of max(s, t) is O(n22n/3).