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Hardness of Approximation for Ground State Problems

Authors: Sevag Gharibian and Carsten Hecht

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 386, 51st International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science (MFCS 2026)


Abstract
After nearly two decades of research, the question of a quantum PCP theorem for quantum Constraint Satisfaction Problems (CSPs) remains wide open. As a result, proving QMA-hardness of approximation for ground state energy estimation, analogous to hardness of approximation for MAX-k-CSP, has remained elusive. (QMA is Quantum Merlin-Arthur, a quantum generalization of NP with a quantum proof and quantum verifier.) Recently, it was shown [Bittel, Gharibian, Kliesch, CCC 2023] that a natural problem involving variational quantum circuits is QCMA-hard to approximate within ratio N^{1-ε} for any ε > 0 and N the input size. (Quantum Classical Merlin-Arthur is QMA, but with a classical proof.) Unfortunately, this problem was not related to quantum CSPs, leaving the question of hardness of approximation for quantum CSPs open. In this work, we show that if instead of focusing on ground state energies (analogous to the optimal number of satisfied clauses), one considers computing properties of the ground space (analogous to computing properties of the MAX-k-CSP solution space), QCMA-hardness of computing ground space properties can be shown. In particular, we show that it is (1) QCMA-complete within ratio N^{1-ε} to approximate the Ground State Connectivity problem (GSCON), and (2) QCMA-hard within the same ratio to estimate the amount of entanglement of a local Hamiltonian’s ground state, denoted Ground State Entanglement (GSE). As a bonus, a simplification of our construction yields NP-completeness of approximation for a natural k-SAT reconfiguration problem, to be contrasted with the recent PCP-based PSPACE-hardness of approximation results for a different definition of k-SAT reconfiguration [Karthik C.S. and Manurangsi, 2023, and Hirahara, Ohsaka, STOC 2024].

Cite as

Sevag Gharibian and Carsten Hecht. Hardness of Approximation for Ground State Problems. In 51st International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science (MFCS 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 386, pp. 48:1-48:19, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)


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@InProceedings{gharibian_et_al:LIPIcs.MFCS.2026.48,
  author =	{Gharibian, Sevag and Hecht, Carsten},
  title =	{{Hardness of Approximation for Ground State Problems}},
  booktitle =	{51st International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science (MFCS 2026)},
  pages =	{48:1--48:19},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-442-0},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{386},
  editor =	{Kouck\'{y}, Michal and Petrișan, Daniela},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.MFCS.2026.48},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-274299},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.MFCS.2026.48},
  annote =	{Keywords: Quantum complexity, hardness of approximation, local Hamiltonians, ground state connectivity, reconfiguration}
}
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