Soorya Rethinasamy

Quantum Computational Complexity and Symmetry

Canadian Journal of Physics (CJP), 2023

Abstract

Testing the symmetries of quantum states and channels provides a way to assess their usefulness for different physical, computational, and communication tasks. Here, we establish several complexity-theoretic results that classify the difficulty of symmetry-testing problems involving a unitary representation of a group and a state or a channel that is being tested. In particular, we prove that various such symmetry-testing problems are complete for bounded-error quantum polynomial time, quantum Merlin–Arthur (QMA), quantum statistical zero-knowledge, two-message quantum interactive proofs (QIPs), two-message QIPs restricted to entanglement-breaking provers, and QIPs, thus spanning the prominent classes of the QIP hierarchy and forging a nontrivial connection between symmetry and quantum computational complexity. Finally, we prove the inclusion of two Hamiltonian symmetry-testing problems in QMA and quantum Arthur–Merlin, while leaving it as an intriguing open question to determine whether these problems are complete for these classes.

BibTeX

			
@article{doi:10.1139/cjp-2023-0260,
    author = {Rethinasamy, Soorya and LaBorde, Margarite L. and Wilde, Mark M.},
    title = {Quantum computational complexity and symmetry},
    journal = {Canadian Journal of Physics},
    volume = {103},
    number = {2},
    pages = {215-239},
    year = {2025},
    doi = {10.1139/cjp-2023-0260},
    URL = {https://doi.org/10.1139/cjp-2023-0260},
    eprint = {https://doi.org/10.1139/cjp-2023-0260}
}