Although measurement and unitary processes can accomplish any quantum evolution in principle, thinking in terms of dissipation and damping can be powerful. We propose a modification of Grover’s algorithm in which the idea of damping plays a natural role. Remarkably, we find that there is a critical damping value that divides between the quantum $O(\sqrt{N})$ and classical $O(N)$ search regimes. In addition, by allowing the damping to vary in a fashion we describe, one obtains a fixed-point quantum search algorithm in which ignorance of the number of targets increases the number of oracle queries only by a factor of 1.5.

• Received 2 October 2008

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.102.150501