Lower Bounds on the Running Time of Two-Way Quantum Finite Automata and Sublogarithmic-Space Quantum Turing Machines

Abstract

The two-way finite automaton with quantum and classical states (2QCFA), defined by Ambainis and Watrous, is a model of quantum computation whose quantum part is extremely limited; however, as they showed, 2QCFA are surprisingly powerful: a 2QCFA with only a single-qubit can recognize the language L pal = {w ∈ {a, b} * : w is a palindrome} with bounded error in expected time 2 O(n) , on inputs of length n.We prove that their result essentially cannot be improved upon: a 2QCFA (of any size) cannot recognize L pal with bounded error in expected time 2 o(n) . To our knowledge, this is the first example of a language that can be recognized with bounded error by a 2QCFA in exponential time but not in subexponential time. Moreover, we prove that a quantum Turing machine (QTM) running in space o(log n) and expected time 2 n 1−Ω(1) cannot recognize L pal with bounded error; again, this is the first lower bound of its kind.Far more generally, we establish a lower bound on the running time of any 2QCFA or o(log n)space QTM that recognizes any language L in terms of a natural "hardness measure" of L. This allows us to exhibit a large family of languages for which we have asymptotically matching lower and upper bounds on the running time of any such 2QCFA or QTM recognizer.