A Note on the Complexity of the Spectral Gap Problem

Abstract

The problem of estimating the spectral gap of a local Hamiltonian is known to be contained in the class $P^{QMA[log]}$: polynomial time with access to a logarithmic number of QMA queries. The problem was shown to be hard for $P^{UQMA[log]}$, a weaker class, under Turing reductions by Gharibian and Yirka [arXiv:1606.05626]. I give a brief proof that the Spectral Gap problem is QMA-hard under a many-one (Karp) reduction. Consequently, the problem is $P^{QMA[log]}$-complete under truth-table reductions. It remains open to characterize the complexity of the Spectral Gap problem under many-one reductions. I conjecture that the problem belongs to a strict subclass of $P^{QMA[log]}$.