Quantum Polynomial Hierarchies: Karp-Lipton, error reduction, and lower bounds (2401.01633v1)

Abstract: The Polynomial-Time Hierarchy ($\mathsf{PH}$) is a staple of classical complexity theory, with applications spanning randomized computation to circuit lower bounds to ''quantum advantage'' analyses for near-term quantum computers. Quantumly, however, despite the fact that at least \emph{four} definitions of quantum $\mathsf{PH}$ exist, it has been challenging to prove analogues for these of even basic facts from $\mathsf{PH}$. This work studies three quantum-verifier based generalizations of $\mathsf{PH}$, two of which are from [Gharibian, Santha, Sikora, Sundaram, Yirka, 2022] and use classical strings ($\mathsf{QCPH}$) and quantum mixed states ($\mathsf{QPH}$) as proofs, and one of which is new to this work, utilizing quantum pure states ($\mathsf{pureQPH}$) as proofs. We first resolve several open problems from [GSSSY22], including a collapse theorem and a Karp-Lipton theorem for $\mathsf{QCPH}$. Then, for our new class $\mathsf{pureQPH}$, we show one-sided error reduction for $\mathsf{pureQPH}$, as well as the first bounds relating these quantum variants of $\mathsf{PH}$, namely $\mathsf{QCPH}\subseteq \mathsf{pureQPH} \subseteq \mathsf{EXP}^{\mathsf{PP}}$.