Two-way finite automata with quantum and classical state

Andris Ambainis, John Watrous

Abstract: We introduce 2-way finite automata with quantum and classical states (2qcfa's). This is a variant on the 2-way quantum finite automata (2qfa) model which may be simpler to implement than unrestricted 2qfa's; the internal state of a 2qcfa may include a quantum part that may be in a (mixed) quantum state, but the tape head position is required to be classical.We show two languages for which 2qcfa's are better than classical 2-way automata. First, 2qcfa's can recognize palindromes, a language that cannot be recognized by 2-way deterministic or probabilistic finite automata. Second, in polynomial time 2qcfa's can recognize {anbn|n∈N}, a language that can be recognized classically by a 2-way probabilistic automaton but only in exponential time.