Published January 22, 2026 | Version v1
Technical note Open

Meta-Grover Algorithm: Recursive Oracle Reduction and Convergence to Constant Query Complexity

Description

We present a recursive construction based on the observation that the oracle in Grover's algorithm is itself defined by a decision problem. The oracle must "know" how to decide membership, and this knowledge constitutes a searchable description. By applying Grover's algorithm to search for the oracle's description, and recursively applying this construction, we obtain a hierarchy of meta-algorithms. We show that the query complexity at level $k$ is $O(N^{1/2^{k+1}})$, which converges to $O(1)$ as $k \to \infty$.

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References

  • L. K. Grover, "A fast quantum mechanical algorithm for database search," Proceedings of the 28th Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing, pp. 212–219, 1996.
  • C. H. Bennett, E. Bernstein, G. Brassard, and U. Vazirani, "Strengths and weaknesses of quantum computing," SIAM Journal on Computing, vol. 26, no. 5, pp. 1510–1523, 1997.