Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2008 iii Paper 57 2 b Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Measuring the state from part (a) in the computational basis succeeds with probability . In the sparse-solution regime , one has . The first success interval with is . Entering it requires , so the first half-probability Grover iterate isFor this integer, the angle is at least and less than , so the rounding cannot skip the required interval. Every smaller nonnegative integer has angle below and hence success below , proving minimality. For , the leading size is . If , the initial measurement already succeeds with probability at least one half and the smallest count is zero; if no search can succeed.