Superposition detection and QMA with non-collapsing measurements

Roozbeh Bassirian and Kunal Marwaha

University of Chicago

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Abstract

We prove that $\sf{QMA}$ where the verifier may also make a single $non-collapsing$ measurement [7] is equal to $\sf{NEXP}$, resolving an open question of Aaronson [5]. We show this is a corollary to a modified proof of $\sf{QMA+ = NEXP}$ [15]. At the core of many results inspired by Blier and Tapp [16] is an unphysical property testing problem deciding whether a quantum state is close to an element of a fixed basis.

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Cited by

[1] Fernando Granha Jeronimo, Pei Wu, and Itai Leigh, "The QMA(2) UniverseComplexity, Entanglement, and Optimization", ACM SIGACT News 57 1, 64 (2026).

[2] Scott Aaronson, Sabee Grewal, Vishnu Iyer, Simon C. Marshall, and Ronak Ramachandran, "PDQMA = DQMA = NEXP: QMA With Hidden Variables and Non-collapsing Measurements", arXiv:2403.02543, (2024).

[3] David Miloschewsky and Supartha Podder, "New Lower-bounds for Quantum Computation with Non-Collapsing Measurements", arXiv:2411.04085, (2024).

[4] Roozbeh Bassirian, Bill Fefferman, Itai Leigh, Kunal Marwaha, and Pei Wu, "Quantum Merlin-Arthur with an internally separable proof", arXiv:2410.19152, (2024).

[5] Sabee Grewal and William Kretschmer, "Unentanglement and Post-Measurement Branching in Quantum Interactive Proofs", arXiv:2509.15319, (2025).

[6] David Miloschewsky and Supartha Podder, "Modifications of Quantum Computation and Adaptive Queries to PP", arXiv:2507.03692, (2025).

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