@inproceedings{61922, abstract = {{We present an extremely simple polynomial-space exponential-time $(1-\varepsilon)$-approximation algorithm for MAX-k-SAT that is (slightly) faster than the previous known polynomial-space $(1-\varepsilon)$-approximation algorithms by Hirsch (Discrete Applied Mathematics, 2003) and Escoffier, Paschos and Tourniaire (Theoretical Computer Science, 2014). Our algorithm repeatedly samples an assignment uniformly at random until finding an assignment that satisfies a large enough fraction of clauses. Surprisingly, we can show the efficiency of this simpler approach by proving that in any instance of MAX-k-SAT (or more generally any instance of MAXCSP), an exponential number of assignments satisfy a fraction of clauses close to the optimal value.}}, author = {{Buhrman, Harry and Gharibian, Sevag and Landau, Zeph and Gall, François Le and Schuch, Norbert and Tamaki, Suguru}}, booktitle = {{SIAM Symposium on Simplicity in Algorithms (SOSA)}}, pages = {{247--253}}, title = {{{A Simpler Exponential-Time Approximation Algorithm for MAX-k-SAT}}}, year = {{2026}}, } @inproceedings{57866, abstract = {{The theory of Total Function NP (TFNP) and its subclasses says that, even if one is promised an efficiently verifiable proof exists for a problem, finding this proof can be intractable. Despite the success of the theory at showing intractability of problems such as computing Brouwer fixed points and Nash equilibria, subclasses of TFNP remain arguably few and far between. In this work, we define two new subclasses of TFNP borne of the study of complex polynomial systems: Multi-homogeneous Systems (MHS) and Sparse Fundamental Theorem of Algebra (SFTA). The first of these is based on B\'ezout's theorem from algebraic geometry, marking the first TFNP subclass based on an algebraic geometric principle. At the heart of our study is the computational problem known as Quantum SAT (QSAT) with a System of Distinct Representatives (SDR), first studied by [Laumann, L\"auchli, Moessner, Scardicchio, and Sondhi 2010]. Among other results, we show that QSAT with SDR is MHS-complete, thus giving not only the first link between quantum complexity theory and TFNP, but also the first TFNP problem whose classical variant (SAT with SDR) is easy but whose quantum variant is hard. We also show how to embed the roots of a sparse, high-degree, univariate polynomial into QSAT with SDR, obtaining that SFTA is contained in a zero-error version of MHS. We conjecture this construction also works in the low-error setting, which would imply SFTA is contained in MHS.}}, author = {{Aldi, Marco and Gharibian, Sevag and Rudolph, Dorian}}, booktitle = {{17th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science Conference (ITCS 2026)}}, pages = {{7:1--7:24}}, title = {{{An unholy trinity: TFNP, polynomial systems, and the quantum satisfiability problem}}}, volume = {{362}}, year = {{2026}}, } @unpublished{67088, abstract = {{We prove quantitative lower bounds on the semidefinite extension complexity of the set of separable quantum states on $\mathbb{C}^d\otimes\mathbb{C}^d$. We consider semidefinite programs (SDPs) that approximate the maximum acceptance probability of a measurement over separable states, the optimization problem underlying QMA(2). In the extended-formulation model of Harrow, Natarajan, and Wu (HNW), all measurements share a common feasible region and an objective-independent embedding of product states that exactly reproduces their acceptance probabilities. For every $0<θ<2/7$, there are constants $c_θ,a_θ>0$ such that, for sufficiently large $d$, any such SDP with uniform additive error $0 0 and N the input size. 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, one considers computing properties of the ground 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-eps) 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].}}, author = {{Gharibian, Sevag and Hecht, Carsten}}, booktitle = {{51st International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science (MFCS)}}, number = {{48}}, pages = {{1--19}}, title = {{{Hardness of approximation for ground state problems}}}, volume = {{386}}, year = {{2026}}, } @unpublished{61778, abstract = {{Understanding the entanglement structure of local Hamiltonian ground spaces is a physically motivated problem, with applications ranging from tensor network design to quantum error-correcting codes. To this end, we study the complexity of estimating ground state entanglement, and more generally entropy estimation for low energy states and Gibbs states. We find, in particular, that the classes qq-QAM [Kobayashi, le Gall, Nishimura, SICOMP 2019] (a quantum analogue of public-coin AM) and QMA(2) (QMA with unentangled proofs) play a crucial role for such problems, showing: (1) Detecting a high-entanglement ground state is qq-QAM-complete, (2) computing an additive error approximation to the Helmholtz free energy (equivalently, a multiplicative error approximation to the partition function) is in qq-QAM, (3) detecting a low-entanglement ground state is QMA(2)-hard, and (4) detecting low energy states which are close to product states can range from QMA-complete to QMA(2)-complete. Our results make progress on an open question of [Bravyi, Chowdhury, Gosset and Wocjan, Nature Physics 2022] on free energy, and yield the first QMA(2)-complete Hamiltonian problem using local Hamiltonians (cf. the sparse QMA(2)-complete Hamiltonian problem of [Chailloux, Sattath, CCC 2012]).}}, author = {{Gharibian, Sevag and Kamminga, Jonas}}, booktitle = {{arXiv:2510.06796}}, title = {{{On the complexity of estimating ground state entanglement and free energy}}}, year = {{2025}}, } @inproceedings{50272, abstract = {{Despite the fundamental role the Quantum Satisfiability (QSAT) problem has played in quantum complexity theory, a central question remains open: At which local dimension does the complexity of QSAT transition from "easy" to "hard"? Here, we study QSAT with each constraint acting on a $k$-dimensional and $l$-dimensional qudit pair, denoted $(k,l)$-QSAT. Our first main result shows that, surprisingly, QSAT on qubits can remain $\mathsf{QMA}_1$-hard, in that $(2,5)$-QSAT is $\mathsf{QMA}_1$-complete. In contrast, $2$-SAT on qubits is well-known to be poly-time solvable [Bravyi, 2006]. Our second main result proves that $(3,d)$-QSAT on the 1D line with $d\in O(1)$ is also $\mathsf{QMA}_1$-hard. Finally, we initiate the study of 1D $(2,d)$-QSAT by giving a frustration-free 1D Hamiltonian with a unique, entangled ground state. Our first result uses a direct embedding, combining a novel clock construction with the 2D circuit-to-Hamiltonian construction of [Gosset, Nagaj, 2013]. Of note is a new simplified and analytic proof for the latter (as opposed to a partially numeric proof in [GN13]). This exploits Unitary Labelled Graphs [Bausch, Cubitt, Ozols, 2017] together with a new "Nullspace Connection Lemma", allowing us to break low energy analyses into small patches of projectors, and to improve the soundness analysis of [GN13] from $\Omega(1/T^6)$ to $\Omega(1/T^2)$, for $T$ the number of gates. Our second result goes via black-box reduction: Given an arbitrary 1D Hamiltonian $H$ on $d'$-dimensional qudits, we show how to embed it into an effective null-space of a 1D $(3,d)$-QSAT instance, for $d\in O(1)$. Our approach may be viewed as a weaker notion of "simulation" (\`a la [Bravyi, Hastings 2017], [Cubitt, Montanaro, Piddock 2018]). As far as we are aware, this gives the first "black-box simulation"-based $\mathsf{QMA}_1$-hardness result, i.e. for frustration-free Hamiltonians.}}, author = {{Rudolph, Dorian and Gharibian, Sevag and Nagaj, Daniel}}, booktitle = {{16th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science (ITCS)}}, number = {{85}}, pages = {{1--24}}, title = {{{Quantum 2-SAT on low dimensional systems is $\mathsf{QMA}_1$-complete: Direct embeddings and black-box simulation}}}, doi = {{10.4230/LIPIcs.ITCS.2025.85}}, volume = {{325}}, year = {{2025}}, } @article{55037, abstract = {{Estimating ground state energies of many-body Hamiltonians is a central task in many areas of quantum physics. In this work, we give quantum algorithms which, given any $k$-body Hamiltonian $H$, compute an estimate for the ground state energy and prepare a quantum state achieving said energy, respectively. Specifically, for any $\varepsilon>0$, our algorithms return, with high probability, an estimate of the ground state energy of $H$ within additive error $\varepsilon M$, or a quantum state with the corresponding energy. Here, $M$ is the total strength of all interaction terms, which in general is extensive in the system size. Our approach makes no assumptions about the geometry or spatial locality of interaction terms of the input Hamiltonian and thus handles even long-range or all-to-all interactions, such as in quantum chemistry, where lattice-based techniques break down. In this fully general setting, the runtime of our algorithms scales as $2^{cn/2}$ for $c<1$, yielding the first quantum algorithms for low-energy estimation breaking the natural bound based on Grover search. The core of our approach is remarkably simple, and relies on showing that any $k$-body Hamiltonian has a low-energy subspace of exponential dimension.}}, author = {{Buhrman, Harry and Gharibian, Sevag and Landau, Zeph and Gall, François Le and Schuch, Norbert and Tamaki, Suguru}}, journal = {{Physical Review Letters}}, pages = {{030601}}, title = {{{Beating Grover search for low-energy estimation and state preparation}}}, doi = {{10.1103/29qw-bssx}}, volume = {{135}}, year = {{2025}}, } @unpublished{61776, abstract = {{We investigate the role of energy, i.e. average photon number, as a resource in the computational complexity of bosonic systems. We show three sets of results: (1. Energy growth rates) There exist bosonic gate sets which increase energy incredibly rapidly, obtaining e.g. infinite energy in finite/constant time. We prove these high energies can make computing properties of bosonic computations, such as deciding whether a given computation will attain infinite energy, extremely difficult, formally undecidable. (2. Lower bounds on computational power) More energy ``='' more computational power. For example, certain gate sets allow poly-time bosonic computations to simulate PTOWER, the set of deterministic computations whose runtime scales as a tower of exponentials with polynomial height. Even just exponential energy and $O(1)$ modes suffice to simulate NP, which, importantly, is a setup similar to that of the recent bosonic factoring algorithm of [Brenner, Caha, Coiteux-Roy and Koenig (2024)]. For simpler gate sets, we show an energy hierarchy theorem. (3. Upper bounds on computational power) Bosonic computations with polynomial energy can be simulated in BQP, ``physical'' bosonic computations with arbitrary finite energy are decidable, and the gate set consisting of Gaussian gates and the cubic phase gate can be simulated in PP, with exponential bound on energy, improving upon the previous PSPACE upper bound. Finally, combining upper and lower bounds yields no-go theorems for a continuous-variable Solovay--Kitaev theorem for gate sets such as the Gaussian and cubic phase gates.}}, author = {{Chabaud, Ulysse and Gharibian, Sevag and Mehraban, Saeed and Motamedi, Arsalan and Naeij, Hamid Reza and Rudolph, Dorian and Sambrani, Dhruva}}, booktitle = {{arXiv:2510.08545}}, title = {{{Energy, Bosons and Computational Complexity}}}, year = {{2025}}, } @unpublished{60432, abstract = {{The Quantum k-SAT problem is the quantum generalization of the k-SAT problem. It is the problem whether a given local Hamiltonian is frustration-free. Frustration-free means that the ground state of the k-local Hamiltonian minimizes the energy of every local interaction term simultaneously. This is a central question in quantum physics and a canonical QMA_1-complete problem. The Quantum k-SAT problem is not as well studied as the classical k-SAT problem in terms of special tractable cases, approximation algorithms and parameterized complexity. In this paper, we will give a graph-theoretic study of the Quantum k-SAT problem with the structures core and radius. These hypergraph structures are important to solve the Quantum k-SAT problem. We can solve a Quantum k-SAT instance in polynomial time if the derived hypergraph has a core of size n-m+a, where a is a constant, and the radius is at most logarithmic. If it exists, we can find a core of size n-m+a with the best possible radius in polynomial time, whereas finding a general minimum core with minimal radius is NP-hard.}}, author = {{Kremer, Simon-Luca and Rudolph, Dorian and Gharibian, Sevag}}, booktitle = {{arXiv:2506.17066}}, title = {{{Quantum k-SAT Related Hypergraph Problems}}}, year = {{2025}}, } @inproceedings{50273, abstract = {{The Polynomial-Time Hierarchy ($\mathsf{PH}$) is a staple of classical complexity theory, with applications spanning randomized computation to circuit lower bounds to ''quantum advantage'' analyses for near-term quantum computers. Quantumly, however, despite the fact that at least \emph{four} definitions of quantum $\mathsf{PH}$ exist, it has been challenging to prove analogues for these of even basic facts from $\mathsf{PH}$. This work studies three quantum-verifier based generalizations of $\mathsf{PH}$, two of which are from [Gharibian, Santha, Sikora, Sundaram, Yirka, 2022] and use classical strings ($\mathsf{QCPH}$) and quantum mixed states ($\mathsf{QPH}$) as proofs, and one of which is new to this work, utilizing quantum pure states ($\mathsf{pureQPH}$) as proofs. We first resolve several open problems from [GSSSY22], including a collapse theorem and a Karp-Lipton theorem for $\mathsf{QCPH}$. Then, for our new class $\mathsf{pureQPH}$, we show one-sided error reduction for $\mathsf{pureQPH}$, as well as the first bounds relating these quantum variants of $\mathsf{PH}$, namely $\mathsf{QCPH}\subseteq \mathsf{pureQPH} \subseteq \mathsf{EXP}^{\mathsf{PP}}$.}}, author = {{Agarwal, Avantika and Gharibian, Sevag and Koppula, Venkata and Rudolph, Dorian}}, booktitle = {{Proceedings of 49th International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science (MFCS)}}, number = {{7}}, pages = {{7--17}}, title = {{{Quantum Polynomial Hierarchies: Karp-Lipton, error reduction, and lower bounds}}}, doi = {{10.4230/LIPIcs.MFCS.2024.7}}, volume = {{306}}, year = {{2024}}, } @inproceedings{50406, abstract = {{What is the power of polynomial-time quantum computation with access to an NP oracle? In this work, we focus on two fundamental tasks from the study of Boolean satisfiability (SAT) problems: search-to-decision reductions, and approximate counting. We first show that, in strong contrast to the classical setting where a poly-time Turing machine requires $\Theta(n)$ queries to an NP oracle to compute a witness to a given SAT formula, quantumly $\Theta(\log n)$ queries suffice. We then show this is tight in the black-box model - any quantum algorithm with "NP-like" query access to a formula requires $\Omega(\log n)$ queries to extract a solution with constant probability. Moving to approximate counting of SAT solutions, by exploiting a quantum link between search-to-decision reductions and approximate counting, we show that existing classical approximate counting algorithms are likely optimal. First, we give a lower bound in the "NP-like" black-box query setting: Approximate counting requires $\Omega(\log n)$ queries, even on a quantum computer. We then give a "white-box" lower bound (i.e. where the input formula is not hidden in the oracle) - if there exists a randomized poly-time classical or quantum algorithm for approximate counting making $o(log n)$ NP queries, then $\text{BPP}^{\text{NP}[o(n)]}$ contains a $\text{P}^{\text{NP}}$-complete problem if the algorithm is classical and $\text{FBQP}^{\text{NP}[o(n)]}$ contains an $\text{FP}^{\text{NP}}$-complete problem if the algorithm is quantum.}}, author = {{Gharibian, Sevag and Kamminga, Jonas}}, booktitle = {{Proceedings of 51st EATCS International Colloquium on Automata, Languages and Programming (ICALP)}}, number = {{70}}, pages = {{1--19}}, title = {{{BQP, meet NP: Search-to-decision reductions and approximate counting}}}, volume = {{297}}, year = {{2024}}, } @unpublished{56944, abstract = {{Quantum Max Cut (QMC), also known as the quantum anti-ferromagnetic Heisenberg model, is a QMA-complete problem relevant to quantum many-body physics and computer science. Semidefinite programming relaxations have been fruitful in designing theoretical approximation algorithms for QMC, but are computationally expensive for systems beyond tens of qubits. We give a second order cone relaxation for QMC, which optimizes over the set of mutually consistent three-qubit reduced density matrices. In combination with Pauli level-$1$ of the quantum Lasserre hierarchy, the relaxation achieves an approximation ratio of $0.526$ to the ground state energy. Our relaxation is solvable on systems with hundreds of qubits and paves the way to computationally efficient lower and upper bounds on the ground state energy of large-scale quantum spin systems.}}, author = {{Huber, Felix and Thompson, Kevin and Parekh, Ojas and Gharibian, Sevag}}, booktitle = {{arXiv:2411.04120}}, title = {{{Second order cone relaxations for quantum Max Cut}}}, year = {{2024}}, } @article{48544, abstract = {{When it comes to NP, its natural definition, its wide applicability across scientific disciplines, and its timeless relevance, the writing is on the wall: There can be only one. Quantum NP, on the other hand, is clearly the apple that fell far from the tree of NP. Two decades since the first definitions of quantum NP started rolling in, quantum complexity theorists face a stark reality: There's QMA, QCMA, QMA1, QMA(2), StoqMA, and NQP. In this article aimed at a general theoretical computer science audience, I survey these various definitions of quantum NP, their strengths and weaknesses, and why most of them, for better or worse, actually appear to fit naturally into the complexity zoo.}}, author = {{Gharibian, Sevag}}, journal = {{ACM SIGACT News}}, number = {{4}}, pages = {{54--91}}, title = {{{Guest Column: The 7 faces of quantum NP}}}, volume = {{54}}, year = {{2024}}, } @inproceedings{32407, abstract = {{Estimating the ground state energy of a local Hamiltonian is a central problem in quantum chemistry. In order to further investigate its complexity and the potential of quantum algorithms for quantum chemistry, Gharibian and Le Gall (STOC 2022) recently introduced the guided local Hamiltonian problem (GLH), which is a variant of the local Hamiltonian problem where an approximation of a ground state is given as an additional input. Gharibian and Le Gall showed quantum advantage (more precisely, BQP-completeness) for GLH with $6$-local Hamiltonians when the guiding vector has overlap (inverse-polynomially) close to 1/2 with a ground state. In this paper, we optimally improve both the locality and the overlap parameters: we show that this quantum advantage (BQP-completeness) persists even with 2-local Hamiltonians, and even when the guiding vector has overlap (inverse-polynomially) close to 1 with a ground state. Moreover, we show that the quantum advantage also holds for 2-local physically motivated Hamiltonians on a 2D square lattice. This makes a further step towards establishing practical quantum advantage in quantum chemistry.}}, author = {{Gharibian, Sevag and Hayakawa, Ryu and Gall, François Le and Morimae, Tomoyuki}}, booktitle = {{Proceedings of the 50th EATCS International Colloquium on Automata, Languages and Programming (ICALP)}}, number = {{32}}, pages = {{1--19}}, title = {{{Improved Hardness Results for the Guided Local Hamiltonian Problem}}}, doi = {{10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2023.32}}, volume = {{261}}, year = {{2023}}, } @inproceedings{31872, abstract = {{Savitch's theorem states that NPSPACE computations can be simulated in PSPACE. We initiate the study of a quantum analogue of NPSPACE, denoted Streaming-QCMASPACE (SQCMASPACE), where an exponentially long classical proof is streamed to a poly-space quantum verifier. Besides two main results, we also show that a quantum analogue of Savitch's theorem is unlikely to hold, as SQCMASPACE=NEXP. For completeness, we introduce Streaming-QMASPACE (SQMASPACE) with an exponentially long streamed quantum proof, and show SQMASPACE=QMA_EXP (quantum analogue of NEXP). Our first main result shows, in contrast to the classical setting, the solution space of a quantum constraint satisfaction problem (i.e. a local Hamiltonian) is always connected when exponentially long proofs are permitted. For this, we show how to simulate any Lipschitz continuous path on the unit hypersphere via a sequence of local unitary gates, at the expense of blowing up the circuit size. This shows quantum error-correcting codes can be unable to detect one codeword erroneously evolving to another if the evolution happens sufficiently slowly, and answers an open question of [Gharibian, Sikora, ICALP 2015] regarding the Ground State Connectivity problem. Our second main result is that any SQCMASPACE computation can be embedded into "unentanglement", i.e. into a quantum constraint satisfaction problem with unentangled provers. Formally, we show how to embed SQCMASPACE into the Sparse Separable Hamiltonian problem of [Chailloux, Sattath, CCC 2012] (QMA(2)-complete for 1/poly promise gap), at the expense of scaling the promise gap with the streamed proof size. As a corollary, we obtain the first systematic construction for obtaining QMA(2)-type upper bounds on arbitrary multi-prover interactive proof systems, where the QMA(2) promise gap scales exponentially with the number of bits of communication in the interactive proof.}}, author = {{Gharibian, Sevag and Rudolph, Dorian}}, booktitle = {{14th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science (ITCS)}}, pages = {{53:1--53:23}}, title = {{{Quantum space, ground space traversal, and how to embed multi-prover interactive proofs into unentanglement}}}, doi = {{10.4230/LIPIcs.ITCS.2023.53}}, volume = {{251}}, year = {{2023}}, } @inproceedings{20841, author = {{Gharibian, Sevag and Watson, James and Bausch, Johannes}}, booktitle = {{Proceedings of the 40th International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science (STACS)}}, pages = {{54:1--54:21}}, title = {{{The Complexity of Translationally Invariant Problems beyond Ground State Energies}}}, doi = {{https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.STACS.2023.54}}, volume = {{254}}, year = {{2023}}, }