Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2013/iii/paper-58/2/i/solution

A good item must exist, so assume ; if , the requested search is impossible, while makes every output good. Put and . Normalize the good and bad components of the uniform superposition state as
The Boolean phase oracle negates and fixes . The Grover diffusion operator is . Its implementation is independent of : conjugate the reflection about by Hadamard gates. One Grover search algorithm iteration is
Hence, by the Grover rotation angle formula,
Choose the nonnegative integer nearest to . Its final angle differs from by at most , so a computational-basis measurement succeeds with probability at least . The allowed small-density regime includes , giving the requested bound. Each iteration uses one Boolean phase oracle query, and .
For , and one iteration reaches exactly. Thus one query gives a good outcome with certainty:
This is exact Grover search on four entries applied to a marked fraction of one quarter, not only to a four-element register.

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