Quantum and stochastic branching programs of bounded width

We prove upper and lower bounds on the power of quantum and stochastic branching programs of bounded width. We show any NC1 language can be accepted exactly by a width-2 quantum branching program of polynomial length, in contrast to the classical case where width 5 is necessary unless NC1 = ACC. This separates width-2 quantum programs from width-2 doubly stochastic programs as we show the latter cannot compute the middle bit of multiplication. Finally, we show that bounded-width quantum and stochastic programs can be simulated by classical programs of larger but bounded width, and thus are in NC 1.© 2002 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg