Debates with small transparent quantum verifiers

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that small quantum verifiers significantly expand the class of debatable languages, outperform classical models, and can efficiently handle certain non-context-free languages.

Contribution

It introduces a quantum debate model with minimal quantum resources that greatly increases the class of debatable languages compared to classical models.

Findings

Quantum verifiers with 2 qubits reach all Turing-decidable languages.

Quantum models outperform classical counterparts in polynomial time debates.

Certain non-context-free languages have short debates with quantum verifiers.

Abstract

We study a model where two opposing provers debate over the membership status of a given string in a language, trying to convince a weak verifier whose coins are visible to all. We show that the incorporation of just two qubits to an otherwise classical constant-space verifier raises the class of debatable languages from at most $\mathsf{NP}$ to the collection of all Turing-decidable languages (recursive languages). When the verifier is further constrained to make the correct decision with probability 1, the corresponding class goes up from the regular languages up to at least $\mathsf{E}$. We also show that the quantum model outperforms its classical counterpart when restricted to run in polynomial time, and demonstrate some non-context-free languages which have such short debates with quantum verifiers.