Quest for Fast Partial Search Algorithm

The Grover quantum algorithm can find a target item in a database faster than any classical algorithm. In partial search, one trades accuracy for speed, and a part of the database (a block) containing the target item can be found even faster. We consider different partial search algorithms and argue that the algorithm originally suggested by Grover and Radhakrishnan and modified by Korepin is the optimal one. The efficiency of an algorithm is measured by the number of queries to the oracle.