📝 Abstract
We study the query complexity of estimating scalar summaries of zigzag bar lifetimes from snapshot-adjacency bits. For graphs $G_1,\ldots,G_m$ on $n$ labeled vertices, let $\ell_b$ be the snapshot lifetime of a degree-one bar $b$ of the intersection zigzag. For a probability generating function $\phi(x)=\mathbb{E}[x^R]$, the statistic $F_\phi=\sum_b\phi(\ell_b/m)$ includes normalized degree-$r$ total persistence and the mean generalized rank over a uniform time window. An exact identity underlies our algorithm: sample $R$ uniform times; the expected generalized rank between their minimum and maximum equals $F_\phi$. For graphs that rank is the circuit rank of an intersection graph, so a nonlinear barcode functional becomes an average of edge and component counts, and no barcode is computed. Without spectral-gap, homology-state, or QRAM assumptions, this gives a quantum estimator with additive error $\varepsilon n$ and $\widetilde O(\sqrt{m(K+n)}/\varepsilon)$ queries when a bound $K\ge F_\phi$ is supplied, against $\widetilde O(m\min\{n^2,(K+n)/\varepsilon^2\})$ classically, and an adaptive quantum variant with the same instance dependence. These estimators are optimal in two regimes. For every fixed power weight $x^r$, $r\ge2$, and for the uniform-window mean, the worst-case complexities are $\widetilde\Theta(n\sqrt m/\varepsilon)$ quantum and $\Theta(n^2m)$ classical. On sparse instances, under an explicit split-leakage promise met by power and binomial weights of logarithmic degree and the promise $F_\phi\le K$, they are $\widetilde\Theta(\sqrt{mK}/\varepsilon)$ and $\widetilde\Theta(m\min\{n^2,K/\varepsilon^2\})$. The classical lower bounds hold against fully adaptive algorithms, and fewer than $m$ such statistics cannot determine the positive-lifetime histogram. All bounds concern snapshot access; with an explicit update stream, near-linear full-barcode algorithms are known.