Complexity phase transitions in instantaneous quantum polynomial-time circuits

Abstract: We study a subclass of the Instantaneous Quantum Polynomial-time (IQP) circuit with a varying density of two-qubit gates. In addition to a known anticoncentration regime, we identify novel parameter conditions where the model is classically simulable or the output distribution follows the Porter-Thomas distribution. By showing that those parameter regimes do not coincide, we argue the presence of more than two phases in the model. The learnability of the output distribution of this model is further studied, which indicates that an energy-based model fails to learn the output distribution even when it is not anticoncentrated. Our study reveals that a quantum circuit model can have multiple fine-grained complexity phases, suggesting the potential for quantum advantage even when the output distribution is far from the Porter-Thomas distribution.