The Space "Just Above" BQP
Scott T. Aaronson, Adam Bouland, Joseph F. Fitzsimons, Mitchell Lee · 2016
We explore the space "just above" BQP by defining a complexity class naCQP (non-adaptive Collapse-free Quantum Polynomial time) which is larger than BQP but does not contain NP relative to an oracle. The class is defined by imagining that quantum computers can perform (non-adaptive) measurements that do not collapse the wavefunction. This non-physical model of computation can efficiently solve problems such as Graph Isomorphism and Approximate Shortest Vector which are believed to be intractable for quantum computers. Furthermore, it can search an unstructured N-element list in Õ(N1/3) time, but no faster than Ω(N1/4), and hence cannot solve NP-hard problems in a black box manner. In short, this model of computation is more powerful than standard quantum computation, but only slightly so. This is surprising as most modifications of BQP increase the power of quantum computation to NP or beyond.