State complexity of one-way quantum finite automata together with classical states

TL;DR

This paper investigates the state complexity of one-way quantum finite automata with classical states (1QFAC), providing bounds, optimizations, and comparisons to classical automata, highlighting their efficiency and relationships with other quantum models.

Contribution

It refines bounds on the relationship between quantum and classical states in 1QFAC, and demonstrates their exponential succinctness over classical automata for certain languages.

Findings

Optimized the bound relating quantum and classical states in 1QFAC.

Provided an upper bound on classical states when quantum basis states are reduced.

Established a lower bound on classical states for recognizing regular languages.

Abstract

One-way quantum finite automata together with classical states (1QFAC) proposed in [Journal of Computer and System Sciences 81(2) (2015) 359--375] is a new one-way quantum finite automata (1QFA) model that integrates quantum finite automata (QFA) and deterministic finite automata (DFA). This model uses classical states to control the evolution and measurement of quantum states. As a quantum-classical hybrid model, 1QFAC recognize all regular languages. It was shown that the state complexity of 1QFAC for some languages is essentially superior to that of DFA and other 1QFA. In this paper, our goal is to clarify state complexity problems for 1QFAC. We obtain the following results: (1) We optimize the bound given by Qiu et al. that characterizes the relationship between quantum basis state number and classical state number of 1QFAC as well as the state number of its corresponding minimal DFA for recognizing any given regular language. (2) We give an upper bound showing that how many classical states are needed if the quantum basis states of 1QFAC are reduced without changing its recognition ability. (3) We give a lower bound of the classical state number of 1QFAC for recognizing any given regular language, and the lower bound is exact if the given language is finite. (4) We show that 1QFAC are exponentially more succinct than DFA and probabilistic finite automata (PFA) for recognizing some regular languages that can not be recognized by measure-once 1QFA (MO-1QFA), measure-many 1QFA (MM-1QFA) or multi-letter 1QFA. (5) We reveal essential relationships between 1QFAC, MO-1QFA and multi-letter 1QFA, and induce a result regarding a quantitative relationship between the state number of multi-letter 1QFA and DFA.