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The Complexity of the Local Hamiltonian Problem

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arxiv quant-ph/0406180 v2 pith:VYNMPUKM submitted 2004-06-24 quant-ph cs.CC

The Complexity of the Local Hamiltonian Problem

classification quant-ph cs.CC
keywords problemhamiltoniancomplexitylocalqma-completecomputationproofquantum
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
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The k-local Hamiltonian problem is a natural complete problem for the complexity class QMA, the quantum analog of NP. It is similar in spirit to MAX-k-SAT, which is NP-complete for k<=2. It was known that the problem is QMA-complete for any k <= 3. On the other hand 1-local Hamiltonian is in P, and hence not believed to be QMA-complete. The complexity of the 2-local Hamiltonian problem has long been outstanding. Here we settle the question and show that it is QMA-complete. We provide two independent proofs; our first proof uses only elementary linear algebra. Our second proof uses a powerful technique for analyzing the sum of two Hamiltonians; this technique is based on perturbation theory and we believe that it might prove useful elsewhere. Using our techniques we also show that adiabatic computation with two-local interactions on qubits is equivalent to standard quantum computation.

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