A Lifting Theorem for Hybrid Classical-Quantum Communication Complexity (2511.17227v1)

Abstract: We investigates a model of hybrid classical-quantum communication complexity, in which two parties first exchange classical messages and subsequently communicate using quantum messages. We study the trade-off between the classical and quantum communication for composed functions of the form $f\circ G^n$, where $f:{0,1}^n\to{\pm1}$ and $G$ is an inner product function of $Θ(\log n)$ bits. To prove the trade-off, we establish a novel lifting theorem for hybrid communication complexity. This theorem unifies two previously separate lifting paradigms: the query-to-communication lifting framework for classical communication complexity and the approximate-degree-to-generalized-discrepancy lifting methods for quantum communication complexity. Our hybrid lifting theorem therefore offers a new framework for proving lower bounds in hybrid classical-quantum communication models. As a corollary, we show that any hybrid protocol communicating $c$ classical bits followed by $q$ qubits to compute $f\circ G^n$ must satisfy $c+q^2=Ω\big(\max{\mathrm{deg}(f),\mathrm{bs}(f)}\cdot\log n\big)$, where $\mathrm{deg}(f)$ is the degree of $f$ and $\mathrm{bs}(f)$ is the block sensitivity of $f$. For read-once formula $f$, this yields an almost tight trade-off: either they have to exchange $Θ\big(n\cdot\log n\big)$ classical bits or $\widetildeΘ\big(\sqrt n\cdot\log n\big)$ qubits, showing that classical pre-processing cannot significantly reduce the quantum communication required. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first non-trivial trade-off between classical and quantum communication in hybrid two-way communication complexity.