arXiv:0909.1428v4 [quant-ph] 19 Apr 2011 One-way quantum finite automata together with classical states: Equivalence and Minimization Daowen Qiu a,b,c, ∗ , Paulo Mateus b, † , Amilcar Sernadas b,‡ a Department of Computer Science, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510006, China b SQIG–Instituto de Telecomunica¸ c˜ oes, IST, TULisbon, Av. Rovisco Pais 1049-001, Lisbon, Portugal c The State Key Laboratory of Computer Science, Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100080, China Abstract One-way quantum finite automata (1QFA) proposed by Moore and Crutchfield and by Kondacs and Watrous accept only subsets of regular languages with bounded error. In this paper, we develop a new computing model of 1QFA, namely, one-way quantum finite automata together with classical states (1QFAC for short). In this model, a component of classical states is added, and the choice of unitary evolution of quantum states at each step is closely related to the current classical state. 1QFAC can accept all regular languages with no error, and in particular, 1QFAC can accept some languages with essentially less number of states than deterministic finite automata (DFA). The main technical results are as follows. (1) We prove that the set of languages accepted by 1QFAC with bounded error consists precisely of all regular languages. (2) We show that, for any prime number m ≥ 2, there exists a regular language L 0 (m) whose minimal DFA needs O(m) states and that can not be accepted by the 1QFA proposed by Moore and Crutchfield and by Kondacs and Watrous, but there exists 1QFAC accepting L 0 (m) with only constant classical states and O(log(m)) quantum basis states. Analogous results for multi-letter automata are also established. (3) By a bilinearization technique we prove that any two 1QFAC A 1 and A 2 are equivalent if and only if they are (k 1 n 1 ) 2 +(k 2 n 2 ) 2 − 1-equivalent, and there exists a polynomial-time O([(k 1 n 1 ) 2 +(k 2 n 2 ) 2 ] 4 ) algorithm for determining their equivalence, where k 1 and k 2 are the numbers of classical states of A 1 and A 2 , as well as n 1 and n 2 are the numbers of quantum basis states of A 1 and A 2 , respectively. (4) We show that the minimization problem of 1QFAC is in EXPSPACE. As a corollary of this result, we obtain that the minimization problem of MO-1QFA is also in EXPSPACE. Finally, we draw some conclusions and point out open ∗ Corresponding author. E-mail address: issqdw@mail.sysu.edu.cn (D. Qiu). † E-mail address: {paulo.mateus,amilcar.sernadas}@math.ist.utl.pt. 1