Research

I work on quantum algorithms and complexity, with a focus on quantum walks and lower bounds via the adversary/compressed-oracle technique.

Unless specified otherwise, authors are listed alphabetically and contributed equally. A * marks a paper whose author list is not alphabetical.

Highlighted Papers

Multidimensional Quantum Walks

arXiv

With Stacey Jeffery. STOC 2023; TheoretiCS 2025; short plenary talk at QIP 2023.

Introduces a multidimensional quantum-walk framework and applies it to k-distinctness and the welded trees problem.

DOI

Thesis

Multidimensional Quantum Walks and the Multiplicative Ladder Adversary, PhD thesis, University of Amsterdam, 2025.

Papers

  1. 2026

    The Compressed Oracle is a Worthy (Multiplicative) Adversary

    arXiv

    Stacey Jeffery and Sebastian Zur.

    53rd International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2026), LIPIcs 374, 118:1-118:23. Presented as a contributed talk at QIP 2026.

    DOI

  2. 2025

    Quantum Walks for Chemical Reaction Networks*

    arXiv

    Seenivasan Hariharan, Sebastian Zur, Sachin Kinge, Lucas Visscher, Kareljan Schoutens, and Stacey Jeffery.

    arXiv preprint arXiv:2509.07890.

  3. 2025

    Multidimensional Electrical Networks and their Application to Exponential Speedups for Graph Problems

    arXiv

    Jianqiang Li and Sebastian Zur.

    Quantum 9, 1733.

    Journal

  4. 2023

    Multidimensional Quantum Walks

    arXiv

    Stacey Jeffery and Sebastian Zur.

    Proceedings of the 55th Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing, 1125-1130. Journal version: TheoretiCS, Volume 4, 2025. Presented as a short plenary talk at QIP 2023.

    DOI

  5. 2019

    Quantum Lazy Sampling and Game-Playing Proofs for Quantum Indifferentiability

    arXiv

    Jan Czajkowski, Christian Majenz, Christian Schaffner, and Sebastian Zur.

    arXiv preprint arXiv:1904.11477.