An important task in quantum physics is the estimation of local quantities for ground states of local Hamiltonians. Recently, Ambainis defined the complexity class P^QMA[log], and motivated its study by showing that the physical task of estimating the expectation value of a local observable against the ground state of a local Hamiltonian is P^QMA[log]-complete. In this paper, we continue the study of P^QMA[log], obtaining the following results. The P^QMA[log]-completeness result of Ambainis requires O(log n)-local observ- ables and Hamiltonians. We show that simulating even a single qubit measurement on ground states of 5-local Hamiltonians is P^QMA[log]-complete, resolving an open question of Ambainis. We formalize the complexity theoretic study of estimating two-point correlation functions against ground states, and show that this task is similarly P^QMA[log]-complete. P^QMA[log] is thought of as "slightly harder" than QMA. We justify this formally by exploiting the hierarchical voting technique of Beigel, Hemachandra, and Wechsung to show P^QMA[log] \subseteq PP. This improves the containment QMA \subseteq PP from Kitaev and Watrous. A central theme of this work is the subtlety involved in the study of oracle classes in which the oracle solves a promise problem. In this vein, we identify a flaw in Ambainis' prior work regarding a P^UQMA[log]-hardness proof for estimating spectral gaps of local Hamiltonians. By introducing a "query validation" technique, we build on his prior work to obtain P^UQMA[log]-hardness for estimating spectral gaps under polynomial-time Turing reductions.
@InProceedings{gharibian_et_al:LIPIcs.TQC.2017.2, author = {Gharibian, Sevag and Yirka, Justin}, title = {{The Complexity of Simulating Local Measurements on Quantum Systems}}, booktitle = {12th Conference on the Theory of Quantum Computation, Communication and Cryptography (TQC 2017)}, pages = {2:1--2:17}, series = {Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)}, ISBN = {978-3-95977-034-7}, ISSN = {1868-8969}, year = {2018}, volume = {73}, editor = {Wilde, Mark M.}, publisher = {Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik}, address = {Dagstuhl, Germany}, URL = {https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.TQC.2017.2}, URN = {urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-85776}, doi = {10.4230/LIPIcs.TQC.2017.2}, annote = {Keywords: Complexity theory, Quantum Merlin Arthur (QMA), local Hamiltonian, local measurement, spectral gap} }
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