Matching Triangles and Triangle Collection: Hardness based on a Weak Quantum Conjecture

TL;DR

This paper establishes quantum lower bounds for certain graph problems by linking their complexity to a quantum conjecture related to the All-Pairs Shortest Path problem, extending classical fine-grained reductions into the quantum realm.

Contribution

It introduces quantum reductions from key problems to Delta-Matching Triangles and Triangle Collection, and formulates a quantum hardness conjecture for APSP, providing new insights into quantum computational complexity.

Findings

Quantum algorithms for these problems imply faster solutions for k-SAT, 3SUM, and APSP.

Quantum lower bounds are proved based on a quantum APSP conjecture.

Quantum algorithms for Delta-Matching Triangles and Triangle Collection are developed with advanced data structures.

Abstract

Classically, for many computational problems one can conclude time lower bounds conditioned on the hardness of one or more of key problems: k-SAT, 3SUM and APSP. More recently, similar results have been derived in the quantum setting conditioned on the hardness of k-SAT and 3SUM. This is done using fine-grained reductions, where the approach is to (1) select a key problem $X$ that, for some function $T$, is conjectured to not be solvable by any $O(T(n)^{1-\epsilon})$ time algorithm for any constant $\epsilon > 0$ (in a fixed model of computation), and (2) reduce $X$ in a fine-grained way to these computational problems, thus giving (mostly) tight conditional time lower bounds for them. Interestingly, for Delta-Matching Triangles and Triangle Collection, classical hardness results have been derived conditioned on hardness of all three mentioned key problems. More precisely, it is proven that an $n^{3-\epsilon}$ time classical algorithm for either of these two graph problems would imply faster classical algorithms for k-SAT, 3SUM and APSP, which makes Delta-Matching Triangles and Triangle Collection worthwhile to study. In this paper, we show that an $n^{1.5-\epsilon}$ time quantum algorithm for either of these two graph problems would imply faster quantum algorithms for k-SAT, 3SUM, and APSP. We first formulate a quantum hardness conjecture for APSP and then present quantum reductions from k-SAT, 3SUM, and APSP to Delta-Matching Triangles and Triangle Collection. Additionally, based on the quantum APSP conjecture, we are also able to prove quantum lower bounds for a matrix problem and many graph problems. The matching upper bounds follow trivially for most of them, except for Delta-Matching Triangles and Triangle Collection for which we present quantum algorithms that require careful use of data structures and Ambainis' variable time search.