Exact Non-Identity Check and Gate-Teleportation-Based Indistinguishability Obfuscation are NP-hard for Low-T-Depth Quantum Circuits
Fuente:
arXiv
Saved in:
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Preprint |
| Published: |
2025
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | |
| Tags: |
Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
| _version_ | 1866909917199204352 |
|---|---|
| author | Nevin, Joshua |
| author_facet | Nevin, Joshua |
| contents | In 2021, Broadbent and Kazmi developed a gate-teleportation-based protocol for computational indistinguishability obfuscation of quantum circuits. This protocol is efficient for Clifford+T circuits with logarithmically many T-gates, where the limiting factor in the efficiency of the protocol is the difficulty, on input a quantum circuit $C$, of the classical task of producing a description of the unitary obtained by conjugating a Pauli $P$ (corresponding to a Bell-measurement outcome) by $C$, where this description only depends on the input-output functionality of $CPC^{\dagger}$. The task above, in turn, is at least as hard as the problem of determining whether two $n$-qubit quantum circuits are perfectly equivalent up to global phase. In 2009, Tanaka defined the corresponding decision problem Exact Non-Identity Check (ENIC) and showed that ENIC is NQP-complete in general. Motivated by this, we consider in this work what happens when we pass from low T-count to low T-depth. In particular, we show that, for Clifford+T circuits of T-depth $O(\log(n))$, deciding ENIC is NP-hard. This effectively rules out the possibility, for Clifford+T circuits of logarithmic T-depth, of either efficient ENIC or efficient gate-teleportation based computational indistinguishability obfuscation, unless P=NP. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_17856 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Exact Non-Identity Check and Gate-Teleportation-Based Indistinguishability Obfuscation are NP-hard for Low-T-Depth Quantum Circuits Nevin, Joshua Quantum Physics 81Pxx 68Qxx In 2021, Broadbent and Kazmi developed a gate-teleportation-based protocol for computational indistinguishability obfuscation of quantum circuits. This protocol is efficient for Clifford+T circuits with logarithmically many T-gates, where the limiting factor in the efficiency of the protocol is the difficulty, on input a quantum circuit $C$, of the classical task of producing a description of the unitary obtained by conjugating a Pauli $P$ (corresponding to a Bell-measurement outcome) by $C$, where this description only depends on the input-output functionality of $CPC^{\dagger}$. The task above, in turn, is at least as hard as the problem of determining whether two $n$-qubit quantum circuits are perfectly equivalent up to global phase. In 2009, Tanaka defined the corresponding decision problem Exact Non-Identity Check (ENIC) and showed that ENIC is NQP-complete in general. Motivated by this, we consider in this work what happens when we pass from low T-count to low T-depth. In particular, we show that, for Clifford+T circuits of T-depth $O(\log(n))$, deciding ENIC is NP-hard. This effectively rules out the possibility, for Clifford+T circuits of logarithmic T-depth, of either efficient ENIC or efficient gate-teleportation based computational indistinguishability obfuscation, unless P=NP. |
| title | Exact Non-Identity Check and Gate-Teleportation-Based Indistinguishability Obfuscation are NP-hard for Low-T-Depth Quantum Circuits |
| topic | Quantum Physics 81Pxx 68Qxx |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.17856 |