Quantum Computers and Unstructured Search: Finding and Counting Items with an Arbitrarily Entangled Initial State

Grover's quantum algorithm for an unstructured search problem and the Count algorithm by Brassard et al. are generalized to the case when the initial state is arbitrarily and maximally entangled. This ansatz might be relevant with quantum subroutines, when the computational qubits and the environment are coupled, and in general when the control over the quantum system is partial.