On a poset of quantum exact promise problems

Abstract Two of the most well-known quantum algorithms, those introduced by Deutsch–Jozsa and Bernstein–Vazirani, can solve promise problems with just one function query, showing an oracular separation with deterministic classical algorithms. In this work, we generalise those methods to study a family of quantum algorithms that can, with just one query, exactly solve promise problems stated over Boolean functions. We also show that these problems can be naturally ordered, inducing a partially ordered set of promise problems. We study the properties of such a poset, showing that the Deutsch–Jozsa and Bernstein–Vazirani problems are, in a certain sense, extremal problems in it, determining some of its automorphisms and proving that it is connected. We also prove that, for the problems in the poset, the corresponding classical query complexities can take any value between 1 and $$2^{n-1}+1$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:msup> <mml:mn>2</mml:mn> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>n</mml:mi> <mml:mo>-</mml:mo> <mml:mn>1</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:msup> <mml:mo>+</mml:mo> <mml:mn>1</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> .