On hybrid models of quantum finite automata

In the literature, there exist several interesting hybrid models of quantum finite automata (QFA) which have both quantum and classical states. This paper describes these models in a uniform way: a hybrid QFA can be seen as a two-component communication system consisting of a quantum component and a classical one, and the existing hybrid QFA differ from each other mainly in the specific communication pattern: classical-quantum, or quantum-classical, or two-way. We clarify the relationship between these hybrid QFA and some other models; in particular, it is shown that hybrid QFA can be simulated exactly by QFA with general quantum operations. As corollaries, some results in the literature concerning the language recognition power and the equivalence problem of hybrid QFA follow directly from these relationships clarified in this paper. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.