Quantum search for unknown number of target items by hybridizing fixed-point method with trail-and-error method

For the unsorted database quantum search with the unknown fraction λ of target items, there are mainly two kinds of methods, i.e., fixed-point and trail-and-error.(i) In terms of the fixed-point method, Yoder et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett.113 210501(2014)] claimed that the quadratic speedup over classical algorithms has been achieved. However, in this paper, we point out that this is not the case, because the query complexity of Yoder’s algorithm is actually in O(1/λ01/2)rather than O(1/λ1/2), where λ0 is a known lower bound of λ.(ii) In terms of the trail-and-error method, currently the algorithm without randomness has to take more than 1 times queries or iterations than the algorithm with randomly selected parameters. For the above problems, we provide the first hybrid quantum search algorithm based on the fixed-point and trail-and-error methods, where the matched multiphase Grover operations are trialed multiple times and the number of iterations increases exponentially along with the number of trials. The upper bound of expected queries as well as the optimal parameters are derived. Compared with Yoder’s algorithm, the query complexity of our algorithm indeed achieves the optimal scaling in λ for quantum search, which reconfirms the practicality of the fixed-point method. In addition, our algorithm also does not contain randomness, and compared with the existing deterministic algorithm, the query complexity can be reduced by about 1/3. Our work provides a new idea for the research on fixed-point and trial-and-error quantum search.