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Unambiguous discrimination among oracle operators

Anthony Chefles1, Akira Kitagawa2,3,4, Masahiro Takeoka2,3, Masahide Sasaki2,3 and Jason Twamley5

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We address the problem of unambiguous discrimination among oracle operators. The general theory of unambiguous discrimination among unitary operators is extended with this application in mind. We prove that entanglement with an ancilla cannot assist any discrimination strategy for commuting unitary operators. We also obtain a simple, practical test for the unambiguous distinguishability of an arbitrary set of unitary operators on a given system. Using this result, we prove that the unambiguous distinguishability criterion is the same for both standard and minimal oracle operators. We then show that, except in certain trivial cases, unambiguous discrimination among all standard oracle operators corresponding to integer functions with fixed domain and range is impossible. However, we find that it is possible to unambiguously discriminate among the Grover oracle operators corresponding to an arbitrarily large unsorted database. The unambiguous distinguishability of standard oracle operators corresponding to totally indistinguishable functions, which possess a strong form of classical indistinguishability, is analysed. We prove that these operators are not unambiguously distinguishable for any finite set of totally indistinguishable functions on a Boolean domain and with arbitrary fixed range. Sets of such functions on a larger domain can have unambiguously distinguishable standard oracle operators, and we provide a complete analysis of the simplest case, that of four functions. We also examine the possibility of unambiguous oracle operator discrimination with multiple parallel calls and investigate an intriguing unitary superoperator transformation between standard and entanglement-assisted minimal oracle operators.


PACS

07.05.Kf Data analysis: algorithms and implementation; data management

03.67.Lx Quantum computation architectures and implementations

MSC

81P68 Quantum computation and quantum cryptography (See also 68Q05, 94A60)

68Q25 Analysis of algorithms and problem complexity (See also 68W40)

68Wxx Algorithms (For numerical algorithms, see 65-XX; for combinatorics and graph theory, see 68Rxx)

Subjects

Computational physics

Instrumentation and measurement

Quantum information and quantum mechanics

Dates

Issue 33 (17 August 2007)

Received 21 March 2007, in final form 6 June 2007

Published 1 August 2007



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