Tight bounds for hybrid quantum-classical query algorithms

Abstract

We study hybrid quantum-classical algorithms in the query model. The computation consists of quantum subroutines that make at most $q$ oracle queries; between subroutines, all qubits are measured and discarded. We prove matching upper and lower bounds for several problems in this model: (i) (Unbiased) Phase estimation up to a precision $\epsilon$ requires $\Theta(\frac{1}{q \epsilon^2})$ queries; (ii) (Unbiased) Amplitude estimation up to a precision $\epsilon$ requires $\Theta(\frac{p(1-p)}{q \epsilon^2})$ queries; (iii) Search among $N$ items requires $\Theta(\frac{N}{q})$ queries; (iv) Two level AND-OR tree (AND of $m$ ORs, with $n$ inputs to each OR) requires $\Theta(\frac{nm}{q})$ queries. All of these bounds are optimal up to a constant factor, for all $q$ from 1, corresponding to the classical complexity, to $Q(f)$, the unrestricted quantum query complexity of the respective problem. We also derive a hybrid lower bound for distinguishing two distributions specified by a state-preparation unitary; this bound is tight up to a logarithmic factor. Besides specific lower bounds, an important contribution is developing methods for proving lower bounds on hybrid quantum algorithms (which have been very ad-hoc up to now). The first two bounds follow from a common framework: we analyze probability distributions over measurement transcripts and bound a progress measure that captures their distinguishability. The AND-OR bound requires a more delicate argument, combining two progress measures that track the information available to the algorithm classically and in quantum form, respectively.