Program checking, program self-correcting and program self-testing
were pioneered by [Blum and Kannan] and [Blum, Luby and Rubinfeld] in
the mid eighties as a new way to gain confidence in software, by
considering program correctness on an input by input basis rather than
full program verification. Work in ... more >>>

We construct a randomness-efficient averaging sampler that is computable by uniform constant-depth circuits with parity gates (i.e., in AC^0[mod 2]). Our sampler matches the parameters achieved by random walks on constant-degree expander graphs, allowing us to apply a variety expander-based techniques within NC^1. For example, we obtain the following results:

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We study the complexity of arithmetic in finite fields of characteristic two, $\F_{2^n}$.
We concentrate on the following two problems:

Iterated Multiplication: Given $\alpha_1, \alpha_2,..., \alpha_t \in \F_{2^n}$, compute $\alpha_1 \cdot \alpha_2 \cdots \alpha_t \in \F_{2^n}$.

Exponentiation: Given $\alpha \in \F_{2^n}$ and a $t$-bit integer $k$, compute $\alpha^k \in \F_{2^n}$.

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We revisit the problem of hardness amplification in $\NP$, as
recently studied by O'Donnell (STOC `02). We prove that if $\NP$
has a balanced function $f$ such that any circuit of size $s(n)$
fails to compute $f$ on a $1/\poly(n)$ fraction of inputs, then
$\NP$ has a function $f'$ such ... more >>>