Quantum Time–Space Tradeoff for Finding Multiple Collision Pairs

We study the problem of finding K collision pairs in a random function f : [N] → [N] by using a quantum computer. We prove that the number of queries to the function in the quantum random oracle model must increase significantly when the size of the available memory is limited. Namely, we demonstrate that any algorithm using S qubits of memory must perform a number T of queries that satisfies the tradeoff T3 S ≥ Ω (K3 N). Classically, the same question has only been settled recently by Dinur [22], who showed that the Parallel Collision Search algorithm of van Oorschot and Wiener [36] achieves the optimal time–space tradeoff of T2 S = Θ (K2 N). Our result limits the extent to which quantum computing may decrease this tradeoff. Our method is based on a novel application of Zhandry’s recording query technique [42] for proving lower bounds in the exponentially small success probability regime. As a second application, we give a simpler proof of the time–space tradeoff T2 S ≥ Ω (N3) for sorting N numbers on a quantum computer, which was first obtained by Klauck, Špalek, and de Wolf [30].