On polynomially many queries to NP or QMA oracles
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We study the complexity of problems solvable in deterministic polynomial time with access to an NP or Quantum Merlin-Arthur (QMA)-oracle, such as P^NP and P^QMA, respectively. The former allows one to classify problems more finely than the Polynomial-Time Hierarchy (PH), whereas the latter characterizes physically motivated problems such as Approximate Simulation (APX-SIM) [Ambainis, CCC 2014]. In this area, a central role has been played by the classes P^NP[log] and P^QMA[log], defined identically to P^NP and P^QMA, except that only logarithmically many oracle queries are allowed. Here, [Gottlob, FOCS 1993] showed that if the adaptive queries made by a P^NP machine have a "query graph" which is a tree, then this computation can be simulated in P^NP[log]. In this work, we first show that for any verification class C∈{NP,MA,QCMA,QMA,QMA(2),NEXP,QMA_exp}, any P^C machine with a query graph of "separator number" s can be simulated using deterministic time exp(slog n) and slog n queries to a C-oracle. When s∈ O(1) (which includes the case of O(1)-treewidth, and thus also of trees), this gives an upper bound of P^C[log], and when s∈ O(log^k(n)), this yields bound QP^C[log^k+1] (QP meaning quasi-polynomial time). We next show how to combine Gottlob's "admissible-weighting function" framework with the "flag-qubit" framework of [Watson, Bausch, Gharibian, 2020], obtaining a unified approach for embedding P^C computations directly into APX-SIM instances in a black-box fashion. Finally, we formalize a simple no-go statement about polynomials (c.f. [Krentel, STOC 1986]): Given a multi-linear polynomial p specified via an arithmetic circuit, if one can "weakly compress" p so that its optimal value requires m bits to represent, then P^NP can be decided with only m queries to an NP-oracle.
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