How does adiabatic quantum computation fit into quantum automata theory?

Quantum computation has emerged as a powerful computational medium of our time, having demonstrated the remarkable efficiency in factoring a positive integer and searching databases faster than any currently known classical computing algorithm. Adiabatic evolution of quantum systems has been studied as a potential means that physically realizes quantum computation. Up to now, all the research on adiabatic quantum systems has dealt with polynomial time-bounded computation and little attention has been paid to, for instance, adiabatic quantum systems consuming only constant memory space. Such quantum systems can be modeled in a form similar to quantum finite automata. This exposition dares to ask a bold question of how to make adiabatic quantum computation fit into the rapidly progressing framework of quantum automata theory. As our answer to this eminent but profound question, we first lay out a fundamental platform to carry out adiabatic evolutionary quantum systems (AEQSs) with limited computational resources (in size, energy, spectral gap, etc.) and then demonstrate how to construct such AEQSs by operating suitable families of quantum finite automata. We further explore fundamental structural properties of decision problems (as well as promise problems) solved quickly by the appropriately constructed AEQSs. (c) 2021 Published by Elsevier Inc.