Preprint · arXiv · January 1, 2020
Quantum Lower and Upper Bounds for 2D-Grid and Dyck Language
Andris Ambainis, Kaspars Balodis, Jānis Iraids, Kamil Ravilevich Khadiev, Vladislavs Kļevickis, Krišjānis Prūsis
Abstract
We study the quantum query complexity of two problems. First, we consider the problem of determining if a sequence of parentheses is a properly balanced one (a Dyck word), with a depth of at most $k$. We call this the $Dyck_{k,n}$ problem. We prove a lower bound of $Ω(c^k \sqrt{n})$, showing that the complexity of this problem increases exponentially in $k$. Here $n$ is the length of the word. When $k$ is a constant, this is interesting as a representative example of star-free languages for which a surprising $\tilde{O}(\sqrt{n})$ query quantum algorithm was recently constructed by Aaronson et al. Their proof does not give rise to a general algorithm. When $k$ is not a constant, $Dyck_{k,n}$ is not context-free. We give an algorithm with $O\left(\sqrt{n}(\log{n})^{0.5k}\right)$ quantum queries for $Dyck_{k,n}$ for all $k$. This is better than the trival upper bound $n$ for $k=o\left(\frac{\log(n)}{\log\log n}\right)$. Second, we consider connectivity problems on grid graphs in 2 dimensions, if some of the edges of the grid may be missing. By embedding the "balanced parentheses" problem into the grid, we show a lower bound of $Ω(n^{1.5-ε})$ for the directed 2D grid and $Ω(n^{2-ε})$ for the undirected 2D grid. The directed problem is interesting as a black-box model for a class of classical dynamic programming strategies including the one that is usually used for the well-known edit distance problem. We also show a generalization of this result to more than 2 dimensions.
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