Improved Lower Bounds for QAC0

TL;DR

This paper establishes the strongest known lower bounds for quantum AC0 circuits, showing they cannot compute or approximate certain functions like PARITY efficiently, thus highlighting limitations of constant-depth quantum circuits.

Contribution

It introduces new classical simulation techniques for QAC0, proving that depth-2 and depth-3 circuits have significant computational limitations, and compares quantum circuit power to classical counterparts.

Findings

Depth-3 QAC0 cannot compute PARITY and needs exponential gates for MAJORITY.

Depth-2 QAC0 cannot approximate high-influence functions with non-negligible advantage.

Depth-2 QAC0 cannot exactly synthesize nekomata states, related to PARITY computation.

Abstract

In this work, we prove the strongest known lower bounds for QAC$^0$, allowing polynomially many gates and ancillae. Our main results show that: (1) Depth-3 QAC$^0$ circuits cannot compute PARITY, and require $\Omega(\exp(\sqrt{n}))$ gates to compute MAJORITY. (2) Depth-2 circuits cannot approximate high-influence Boolean functions (e.g., PARITY) with non-negligible advantage, regardless of size. We develop new classical simulation techniques for QAC$^0$ to obtain our depth-3 bounds. In these results, we relax the output requirement of the quantum circuit to a single bit, making our depth $2$ approximation bound stronger than the previous best bound of Rosenthal (2021). This also enables us to draw natural comparisons with classical AC$^0$ circuits, which can compute PARITY exactly in depth $2$ (exp size). Our techniques further suggest that, for boolean total functions, constant-depth quantum circuits do not necessarily provide more power than their classical counterparts. Our third result shows that depth $2$ QAC$^0$ circuits, regardless of size, cannot exactly synthesize an $n$-target nekomata state (a state whose synthesis is directly related to the computation of PARITY). This complements the depth $2$ exponential size upper bound of Rosenthal (2021) for approximating nekomatas (which is used as a sub-circuit in the only known constant depth PARITY upper bound). Finally, we argue that approximating PARITY in QAC0, with significantly better than 1/poly(n) advantage on average, is just as hard as computing it exactly. Thus, extending our techniques to higher depths would also rule out approximate circuits for PARITY and related problems