QIP = PSPACE

Abstract

This work considers the quantum interactive proof system model of computation, which is the (classical) interactive proof system model’s natural quantum computational analogue. An exact characterization of the expressive power of quantum interactive proof systems is obtained: the collection of computational problems having quantum interactive proof systems consists precisely of those problems solvable by deterministic Turing machines that use at most a polynomial amount of space (or, more succinctly, QIP = PSPACE). This characterization is proved through the use of a parallelized form of the matrix multiplicative weights update method, applied to a class of semidefinite programs that captures the computational power of quantum interactive proof systems. One striking implication of this characterization is that quantum computing provides no increase in computational power whatsoever over classical computing in the context of interactive proof systems, for it is well known that the collection of computational problems having classical interactive proof systems coincides with those problems solvable by polynomial-space computations.