A different kind of quantum search

Abstract

The quantum search algorithm consists of an alternating sequence of selective inversions and diffusion type operations, as a result of which it can find a target state in an unsorted database of size N in only sqrt(N) queries. This paper shows that by replacing the selective inversions by selective phase shifts of Pi/3, the algorithm gets transformed into something similar to a classical search algorithm. Just like classical search algorithms this algorithm has a fixed point in state-space toward which it preferentially converges. In contrast, the original quantum search algorithm moves uniformly in a two-dimensional state space. This feature leads to robust search algorithms and also to conceptually new schemes for error correction.