  We present a new way of encoding a quantum computation into a 3-local
Hamiltonian. Our construction is novel in that it does not include any terms
that induce legal-illegal clock transitions. Therefore, the weights of the
terms in the Hamiltonian do not scale with the size of the problem as in
previous constructions. This improves the construction by Kempe and Regev, who
were the first to prove that 3-local Hamiltonian is complete for the complexity
class QMA, the quantum analogue of NP.
  Quantum k-SAT, a restricted version of the local Hamiltonian problem using
only projector terms, was introduced by Bravyi as an analogue of the classical
k-SAT problem. Bravyi proved that quantum 4-SAT is complete for the class QMA
with one-sided error (QMA_1) and that quantum 2-SAT is in P. We give an
encoding of a quantum circuit into a quantum 4-SAT Hamiltonian using only
3-local terms. As an intermediate step to this 3-local construction, we show
that quantum 3-SAT for particles with dimensions 3x2x2 (a qutrit and two
qubits) is QMA_1 complete. The complexity of quantum 3-SAT with qubits remains
an open question.
