We provide compelling evidence for the potential of hardness-vs.-randomness approaches to make progress on the long-standing problem of derandomizing space-bounded computation.

Our first contribution is a derandomization of bounded-space machines from hardness assumptions for classes of uniform deterministic algorithms, for which strong (but non-matching) lower bounds can be unconditionally proved. ... more >>>

We prove that for every $\alpha \in [1,1.5]$,
$$
\text{BPSPACE}[S]\subseteq \text{TISP}[2^{S^{\alpha}},S^{3-\alpha}]
$$
where $\text{BPSPACE}[S]$ corresponds to randomized space $O(S)$ computation, and $\text{TISP}[T,S]$ to time $poly(T)$, space $O(S)$ computation. Our result smoothly interpolates between the results of (Nisan STOC 1992) and (Saks and Zhou FOCS 1995), which prove $\text{BPSPACE}[S]$ is contained ... more >>>

We give new upper and lower bounds on the power of several restricted classes of arbitrary-order read-once branching programs (ROBPs) and standard-order ROBPs (SOBPs) that have received significant attention in the literature on pseudorandomness for space-bounded computation.

Regular SOBPs of length $n$ and width $\lfloor w(n+1)/2\rfloor$ can exactly simulate general ... more >>>

Let $\mathcal{L}$ be a language that can be decided in linear space and let $\epsilon >0$ be any constant. Let $\mathcal{A}$ be the exponential hardness assumption that for every $n$, membership in $\mathcal{L}$ for inputs of length~$n$ cannot be decided by circuits of size smaller than $2^{\epsilon n}$.
We ... more >>>

We give a deterministic white-box algorithm to estimate the expectation of a read-once branching program of length $n$ and width $w$ in space
$$\tilde{O}\left(\log n+\sqrt{\log n}\cdot\log w\right).$$
In particular, we obtain an almost optimal space $\tilde{O}(\log n)$ derandomization of programs up to width $w=2^{\sqrt{\log n}}$.
Previously, ... more >>>

We analyze the Fourier growth, i.e. the $L_1$ Fourier weight at level $k$ (denoted $L_{1,k}$), of read-once regular branching programs.
We prove that every read-once regular branching program $B$ of width $w \in [1,\infty]$ with $s$ accepting states on $n$-bit inputs must have its $L_{1,k}$ bounded by
$$
\min\left\{ ... more >>>

We construct an explicit $\varepsilon$-hitting set generator (HSG) for regular ordered branching programs of length $n$ and $\textit{unbounded width}$ with a single accept state that has seed length
\[O(\log(n)(\log\log(n)+\log(1/\varepsilon))).\]
Previously, the best known seed length for regular branching programs of width $w$ with a single accept state was ... more >>>

The classic Impagliazzo--Nisan--Wigderson (INW) psesudorandom generator (PRG) (STOC `94) for space-bounded computation uses a seed of length $O(\log n \cdot \log(nwd/\varepsilon))$ to fool ordered branching programs of length $n$, width $w$, and alphabet size $d$ to within error $\varepsilon$. A series of works have shown that the analysis of the ... more >>>

A recent paper of Braverman, Cohen, and Garg (STOC 2018) introduced the concept of a pseudorandom pseudodistribution generator (PRPG), which amounts to a pseudorandom generator (PRG) whose outputs are accompanied with real coefficients that scale the acceptance probabilities of any potential distinguisher. They gave an explicit construction of PRPGs for ... more >>>

We prove that the Impagliazzo-Nisan-Wigderson (STOC 1994) pseudorandom generator (PRG) fools ordered (read-once) permutation branching programs of unbounded width with a seed length of $\widetilde{O}(\log d + \log n \cdot \log(1/\varepsilon))$, assuming the program has only one accepting vertex in the final layer. Here, $n$ is the length of the ... more >>>