The Degree of Quantum Correlation Required to Speed-Up a Computation

Abstract: The one clean qubit model of quantum computation (DQC1) efficiently implements a computational task that is not known to have a classical alternative. During the computation, there is never more than a small but finite amount of entanglement present, and it is typically vanishingly small in the system size. In this paper, we demonstrate that there is nothing unexpected hidden within the DQC1 model -- Grover's Search, when acting on a mixed state, provably exhibits a speed-up over classical with guarantees as to the presence of only vanishingly small amounts of quantum correlations (entanglement and quantum discord) -- while arguing that this is not an artefact of the oracle-based construction. We also present some important refinements in the evaluation of how much entanglement may be present in DQC1, and how the typical entanglement of the system must be evaluated.