We show the problem of counting homomorphisms from the fundamental group of a homology @math -sphere @math to a finite, non-abelian simple group @math is #P-complete, in the case that @math is fixed and @math is the computational input. Similarly, deciding if there is a non-trivial homomorphism is NP-complete. In both reductions, we can guarantee that every non-trivial homomorphism is a surjection. As a corollary, for any fixed integer @math , it is NP-complete to decide whether @math admits a connected @math -sheeted covering. Our construction is inspired by universality results in topological quantum computation. Given a classical reversible circuit @math , we construct @math so that evaluations of @math with certain initialization and finalization conditions correspond to homomorphisms @math . An intermediate state of @math likewise corresponds to a homomorphism @math , where @math is a pointed Heegaard surface of @math of genus @math . We analyze the action on these homomorphisms by the pointed mapping class group @math and its Torelli subgroup @math . By results of Dunfield-Thurston, the action of @math is as large as possible when @math is sufficiently large; we can pass to the Torelli group using the congruence subgroup property of @math . Our results can be interpreted as a sharp classical universality property of an associated combinatorial @math -dimensional TQFT.
Universality also implies that any approximation of these invariants that could be useful for computational topology is @math -hard @cite_24 @cite_9 . Note that exact evaluation of the Jones polynomial was earlier shown to be @math -hard without quantum computation methods @cite_0 .
@cite_24 @cite_9 @cite_0
2962824725 1632584182 2164171842 1972018751
Freedman, Kitaev, and Wang (2002), and later Aharonov, Jones, and Landau (2009), established a quantum algorithm to "additively" approximate the Jones polynomial V(L;t) at any principal root of unity t. The strength of this additive approximation depends exponentially on the bridge number of the link presentation. Freedman, Larsen, and Wang (2002) established that the approximation is universal for quantum computation at a non- lattice, principal root of unity. We show that any value-distinguishing approximation of the Jones polynomial at these non-lattice roots of unity is #P-hard. Given the power to decide whetherjV(L;t)j b for fixed constants 0 1, T(G; x; y) is #P-hard to approximate within a factor of c even for planar graphs G. Along the way, we clarify and generalize both Aaronson's theorem and the Solovay- Kitaev theorem. In the first 36 pages of this paper, we provide polynomial quantum algorithms for additive approximations of the Tutte polynomial, at any point in the Tutte plane, for any planar graph. This includes as special cases the AJL algorithm for the Jones polynomial, the partition function of the Potts model for any weighted planer graph at any temperature, and many other combinatorial graph properties. In the second part of the paper we prove the quantum universality of many of the problems for which we provide an algorithm, thus providing a large set of new quantum-complete problems. Unfortunately, we do not know that this holds for the Potts model case; this is left as an important open problem. The main progress in this work is in our ability to handle non-unitary representations of the Temperley Lieb algebra, both when applying them in the algorithm, and, more importantly, in the proof of universality, when encoding quantum circuits using non-unitary operators. To this end we develop many new tools, that allow proving density and applying the Solovay Kitaev theorem in the case of non-unitary matrices. We hope that these tools will open up new possibilities of using non-unitary reps in other quantum computation contexts. We show that the topological modular functor from Witten-Chern-Simons theory is universal for quantum computation in the sense that a quantum circuit com- putation can be efficiently approximated by an intertwining action of a braid on the functor's state space. A computational model based on Chern-Simons theory at a fifth root of unity is defined and shown to be polynomially equivalent to the quantum circuit model. The chief technical advance: the density of the irreducible sectors of the Jones representation has topological implications which will be considered elsewhere. For a 3-manifold with triangulated boundary, the Turaev–Viro topological invariant can be interpreted as a quantum error-correcting code. The code has local stabilizers, identified by Levin and Wen, on a qudit lattice. Kitaev’s toric code arises as a special case. The toric code corresponds to an abelian anyon model, and therefore requires out-of-code operations to obtain universal quantum computation. In contrast, for many categories, such as the Fibonacci category, the Turaev–Viro code realizes a non-abelian anyon model. A universal set of fault-tolerant operations can be implemented by deforming the code with local gates, in order to implement anyon braiding. We identify the anyons in the code space, and present schemes for initialization, computation and measurement. This provides a family of constructions for fault-tolerant quantum computation that are closely related to topological quantum computation, but for which the fault tolerance is implemented in software rather than coming from a physical medium.