Quantum Meta-Complexity Is All You Need: Characterizing One-Way Puzzles via Time-Bounded Kolmogorov Complexity

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2609.02687v1
• Date: Wed, 02 Sep 2026 14:54:44 GMT
• Title: Quantum Meta-Complexity Is All You Need: Characterizing One-Way Puzzles via Time-Bounded Kolmogorov Complexity
• Abstract summary: We initiate the time-bounded meta-complexity program for quantum cryptography.<n>Recent work characterizes one-way puzzles, the minimal search primitive of quantum cryptography without one-way functions.
• Score: 0.30458514384586394
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Abstract: We initiate the time-bounded meta-complexity program for quantum cryptography. Recent work characterizes one-way puzzles, the minimal search primitive of quantum cryptography without one-way functions, by the average-case hardness of approximating the plain, uncomputable Kolmogorov complexity over quantumly samplable distributions; the classical program of Liu and Pass, by contrast, lives at polynomial time bounds. We define a probabilistic time-bounded quantum program complexity pKq^t for classical strings and prove two unconditional theorems. First, a quantum coding theorem: any string output by a quantum polynomial-time sampler with probability delta admits a description of the information-theoretically optimal length log(1/delta) plus logarithmic terms, decodable by a quantum machine in time O(sqrt(1/delta)) times a polynomial, via amplitude amplification over the coherently executed sampler. Second, an exact characterization at subexponential time: one-way puzzles exist if and only if the gap problem for pKq at time bound 2^(n/2) poly(n) is weakly quantum-average-hard, refining the plain-complexity characterizations. We then isolate the polynomial-time coding theorem as the single load-bearing open conjecture of the program, prove that it implies the full polynomial-time characterization, analyze why the classical derandomization proof resists quantization, and formulate a relativized barrier conjecture delimiting string-valued meta-complexity at one-way puzzles. Conjectures are labeled as such throughout.

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