Quantum Advantage with Adaptive Shallow Circuits

Abstract

Quantum advantage is widely expected to require sufficiently deep circuits, where correlations and global computational structure can grow beyond the reach of efficient classical simulation. This expectation is especially stark for constant-depth circuits with local readout: the expectation value of any fixed local observable lies within a bounded backward lightcone and is therefore classically tractable. Here we show that measurement feedback changes this picture. We establish a strict hierarchy of computational power: at fixed coherent depth, increasing the number of feedback outcomes strictly enlarges the class of functions accessible through a local expectation value. The two ends of this hierarchy exhibit distinct computational regimes. With logarithmic feedback, local expectation values for product-state inputs are efficiently classically simulable. Polynomial feedback, by contrast, enables an explicit family of adaptive shallow circuits to encode prime-field discrete logarithm problem~(DLP) into a fixed single-qubit expectation. Assuming the standard worst-case classical hardness of DLP, estimating this expectation value is classically hard. These results reveal a feedback-driven complexity transition, with further implications for resource lower bounds on DLP and the complexity of local-observable estimation under area-law entanglement. Our results open a new route to quantum advantage with shallow quantum circuits.