The local Hamiltonian (LH) problem is the canonical QMA-complete problem introduced by Kitaev. In this paper, we show its hardness in a very strong sense: we show that the 3-local Hamiltonian problem on n qubits cannot be solved classically in time O(2^{(1-ε)n}) for any ε > 0 under the Strong Exponential-Time Hypothesis (SETH), and cannot be solved quantumly in time O(2^{(1-ε)n/2}) for any ε > 0 under the Quantum Strong Exponential-Time Hypothesis (QSETH). These lower bounds give evidence that the currently known classical and quantum algorithms for LH cannot be significantly improved. Furthermore, we are able to demonstrate fine-grained complexity lower bounds for approximating the quantum partition function (QPF) with an arbitrary constant relative error. Approximating QPF with relative error is known to be equivalent to approximately counting the dimension of the solution subspace of QMA problems. We show the SETH and QSETH hardness to estimate QPF with constant relative error. We then provide a quantum algorithm that runs in O(√{2ⁿ}) time for an arbitrary 1/poly(n) relative error, matching our lower bounds and improving the state-of-the-art algorithm by Bravyi, Chowdhury, Gosset, and Wocjan (Nature Physics 2022) in the low-temperature regime. To prove our fine-grained lower bounds, we introduce the first size-preserving circuit-to-Hamiltonian construction that encodes the computation of a T-time quantum circuit acting on N qubits into a (d+1)-local Hamiltonian acting on N+O(T^{1/d}) qubits. This improves the standard construction based on the unary clock, which uses N+O(T) qubits.

It is known that there exist multi-prover interactive protocols (MIP protocols) for the complexity class NEXP, succinct MIP protocols for NP and multi-prover interactive protocols with shared entanglement (MIP^∗ protocols) for RE. This extraordinary power of multi-prover interactive proof systems comes from the assumption that provers do not communicate with each other during the protocols. If they are allowed to communicate freely, the setting is the same as in the single-prover case, and the computational power of the system becomes significantly weaker. In this paper, we investigate for the first time the setting where communication (i.e., leakage of information) between provers is allowed but bounded. We introduce two techniques to approach this question and show that multi-prover interactive proof systems are robust against some amount of leakage. Our first technique is based on parallel repetition theorems. We apply it to show that for any polynomial p, we can construct two-prover one-round MIP and MIP^∗ protocols for NEXP and RE, respectively, that are robust against p(n) bits of leakage. We further derive our second technique to convert any low-soundness PCP construction to a two-prover one-round MIP protocol for NP robust against leakage. We also discuss the relation between robustness against leakage in multi-prover interactive proof systems and the Sliding Scale Conjecture in the PCP literature.

Quantum nondeterministic distributed computing was recently introduced as dQMA (distributed quantum Merlin-Arthur) protocols by Fraigniaud, Le Gall, Nishimura and Paz (ITCS 2021). In dQMA protocols, with the help of quantum proofs and local communication, nodes on a network verify some global property of the network. Fraigniaud et al. showed that, when the network size is small, there exists an exponential separation in proof size between distributed classical and quantum verification protocols, for the equality problem, where the verifiers check if all the data owned by a subset of them are identical. In this paper, we further investigate and characterize the power of the dQMA protocols for various decision problems.

Recently, Chia, Chung and Lai (STOC 2020) and Coudron and Menda (STOC 2020) have shown that there exists an oracle $\mathcal{O}$ such that $\mathsf{BQP}^\mathcal{O} \neq (\mathsf{BPP^{BQNC}})^\mathcal{O} \cup (\mathsf{BQNC^{BPP}})^\mathcal{O}$. In fact, Chia et al. proved a stronger statement: for any depth parameter $d$, there exists an oracle that separates quantum depth $d$ and $2d+1$, when polynomial-time classical computation is allowed. This implies that relative to an oracle, doubling quantum depth gives classical and quantum hybrid schemes more computational power. In this paper, we show that for any depth parameter $d$, there exists an oracle that separates quantum depth $d$ and $d+1$, when polynomial-time classical computation is allowed. This gives an optimal oracle separation of classical and quantum hybrid schemes. To prove our result, we consider $d$-Bijective Shuffling Simon's Problem (which is a variant of $d$-Shuffling Simon's Problem considered by Chia et al.) and an oracle inspired by an "in-place" permutation oracle.

In this paper we study expander graphs and their minors. Specifically, we attempt to answer the following question: what is the largest function $f(n,α,d)$, such that every $n$-vertex $α$-expander with maximum vertex degree at most $d$ contains {\bf every} graph $H$ with at most $f(n,α,d)$ edges and vertices as a minor? Our main result is that there is some universal constant $c$, such that $f(n,α,d)\geq \frac{n}{c\log n}\cdot \left(\fracα{d}\right )^c$. This bound achieves a tight dependence on $n$: it is well known that there are bounded-degree $n$-vertex expanders, that do not contain any grid with $Ω(n/\log n)$ vertices and edges as a minor. The best previous result showed that $f(n,α,d) \geq Ω(n/\log^κn)$, where $κ$ depends on both $α$ and $d$. Additionally, we provide a randomized algorithm, that, given an $n$-vertex $α$-expander with maximum vertex degree at most $d$, and another graph $H$ containing at most $\frac{n}{c\log n}\cdot \left(\fracα{d}\right )^c$ vertices and edges, with high probability finds a model of $H$ in $G$, in time poly$(n)\cdot (d/α)^{O\left( \log(d/α) \right)}$. We note that similar but stronger results were independently obtained by Krivelevich and Nenadov: they show that $f(n,α,d)=Ω\left(\frac{nα^2}{d^2\log n} \right)$, and provide an efficient algorithm, that, given an $n$-vertex $α$-expander of maximum vertex degree at most $d$, and a graph $H$ with $O\left( \frac{nα^2}{d^2\log n} \right)$ vertices and edges, finds a model of $H$ in $G$. Finally, we observe that expanders are the `most minor-rich' family of graphs in the following sense: for every $n$-vertex and $m$-edge graph $G$, there exists a graph $H$ with $O \left( \frac{n+m}{\log n} \right)$ vertices and edges, such that $H$ is not a minor of $G$.