On the uselessness of quantum queries

Given a prior probability distribution over a set of possible oracle functions, we define a number of queries to be useless for determining some property of the function if the probability that the function has the property is unchanged after the oracle responds to the queries. A familiar example is the parity of a uniformly random Boolean-valued function over {1, 2, ..., N}, for which N - 1 classical queries are useless. We prove that if 2k classical queries are useless for some oracle problem, then k quantum queries are also useless. For such problems, which include classical threshold secret sharing schemes, our result also gives a new way to obtain a lower bound on the quantum query complexity, even in cases where neither the function nor the property to be determined is Boolean. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.