The Parametrized Complexity of Quantum Verification

Abstract

We initiate the study of parameterized complexity of QMA problems in terms of the number of non-Clifford gates in the problem description. We show that for the problem of parameterized quantum circuit satisfiability, there exists a classical algorithm solving the problem with a runtime scaling exponentially in the number of non-Clifford gates but only polynomially with the system size. This result follows from our main result, that for any Clifford + t T-gate quantum circuit satisfiability problem, the search space of optimal witnesses can be reduced to a stabilizer subspace isomorphic to at most t qubits (independent of the system size). Furthermore, we derive new lower bounds on the T-count of circuit satisfiability instances and the T-count of the W-state assuming the classical exponential time hypothesis (ETH). Lastly, we explore the parameterized complexity of the quantum non-identity check problem.