The Quantum Overlap Gap Property and Algorithmic Hardness for the Quantum Hypergraph Max-Cut Problem

Abstract:In this work, we analyze the average-case hardness of approximation for the Quantum Hypergraph Max-Cut problem using the theoretical framework of the Quantum Overlap Gap Property (QOGP). We establish two main results. Our first result applies to a wide class of stable quantum algorithms, satisfying a Lipschitz property with respect to the quantum Wasserstein distance of order $2$. We show a weak hardness result, demonstrating that for any Lipschitz constant $L$, there is some $k$ such that $L$-stable algorithms cannot approximate the optimal solution to Quantum Hypergraph Max-Cut on $k$-uniform hypergraphs in the average case. Additionally, we establish a strong hardness result where $k$ is independent of $L$, but only for a more restricted class of local quantum algorithms defined using the quantum Wasserstein distance of order $\infty$. We apply these results to establish concrete depth lower bounds for popular quantum algorithms for preparing near-optimal states for this problem.

Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Computational Complexity (cs.CC)

arXiv:2609.10838 [quant-ph]

(or arXiv:2609.10838v1 [quant-ph] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2609.10838 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

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