In this paper, we establish a novel connection between total variation (TV) distance estimation and probabilistic inference. In particular, we present an efficient, structure-preserving reduction from relative approximation of TV distance to probabilistic inference over directed graphical models. This reduction leads to a fully polynomial randomized approximation scheme (FPRAS) for ... more >>>

Rounding has proven to be a fundamental tool in theoretical computer science. By observing that rounding and partitioning of $\mathbb{R}^d$ are equivalent, we introduce the following natural partition problem which we call the secluded hypercube partition problem: Given $k\in\mathbb{N}$ (ideally small) and $\epsilon>0$ (ideally large), is there a partition of ... more >>>

The Acceptance Probability Estimation Problem (APEP) is to additively approximate the acceptance probability of a Boolean circuit. This problem admits a probabilistic approximation scheme. A central question is whether we can design a pseudodeterministic approximation algorithm for this problem: a probabilistic polynomial-time algorithm that outputs a canonical approximation with high ... more >>>

In [12] (CCC 2013), the authors presented an algorithm for the reachability problem over directed planar graphs that runs in polynomial-time and uses $O(n^{1/2+\epsilon})$ space. A critical ingredient of their algorithm is a polynomial-time, $\tldO(\sqrt{n})$-space algorithm to compute a separator of a planar graph. The conference version provided a sketch ... more >>>

We obtain the following new simultaneous time-space upper bounds for the directed reachability problem.
(1) A polynomial-time,
$\tilde{O}(n^{2/3}g^{1/3})$-space algorithm for directed graphs embedded on orientable surfaces of genus $g$. (2) A polynomial-time, $\tilde{O}(n^{2/3})$-space algorithm for all $H$-minor-free graphs given the tree decomposition, and (3) for $K_{3, 3}$-free and ... more >>>

The graph reachability problem, the computational task of deciding whether there is a path between two given nodes in a graph is the canonical problem for studying space bounded computations. Three central open questions regarding the space complexity of the reachability problem over directed graphs are: (1) improving Savitch's $O(\log^2 ... more >>>

We show that two complexity classes introduced about two decades ago are equal. ReachUL is the class of problems decided by nondeterministic log-space machines which on every input have at most one computation path from the start configuration to any other configuration. ReachFewL, a natural generalization of ReachUL, is the ... more >>>

We consider the reachability problem for a certain class of directed acyclic graphs embedded on surfaces. Let ${\cal G}(m,g)$ be the class of directed acyclic graphs with $m = m(n)$ source vertices embedded on a surface (orientable or non-orientable) of genus $g = g(n)$. We give a log-space reduction that ... more >>>

We show a simple application of Green’s theorem from multivariable calculus to the isolation problem in planar graphs. In particular, we construct a skew-symmetric, polynomially bounded, edge weight function for a directed planar graph in logspace such that the weight of any simple cycle in the graph is non-zero with ... more >>>

We investigate the space complexity of certain perfect matching
problems over bipartite graphs embedded on surfaces of constant genus
(orientable or non-orientable). We show that the problems of deciding
whether such graphs have (1) a perfect matching or not and (2) a
unique perfect matching or not, are in the ... more >>>

We report progress on the \NL\ vs \UL\ problem.
\begin{itemize}
\item[-] We show unconditionally that the complexity class $\ReachFewL\subseteq\UL$. This improves on the earlier known upper bound $\ReachFewL \subseteq \FewL$.
\item[-] We investigate the complexity of min-uniqueness - a central
notion in studying the \NL\ vs \UL\ problem.
more >>>

We clarify the role of Kolmogorov complexity in the area of randomness extraction. We show that a computable function is an almost randomness extractor if and only if it is a Kolmogorov complexity
extractor, thus establishing a fundamental equivalence between two forms of extraction studied in the literature: Kolmogorov extraction
more >>>

Designing algorithms that use logarithmic space for graph reachability problems is fundamental to complexity theory. It is well known that for general directed graphs this problem is equivalent to the NL vs L problem. For planar graphs, the question is not settled. Showing that the planar reachability problem is NL-complete ... more >>>

We apply recent results on extracting randomness from independent
sources to ``extract'' Kolmogorov complexity. For any $\alpha,
\epsilon > 0$, given a string $x$ with $K(x) > \alpha|x|$, we show
how to use a constant number of advice bits to efficiently
compute another string $y$, $|y|=\Omega(|x|)$, with $K(y) >
(1-\epsilon)|y|$. ... more >>>

Yao (in a lecture at DIMACS Workshop on structural complexity and
cryptography) showed that if a language L is 2-locally-random
reducible to a Boolean functio, then L is in PSPACE/poly.
Fortnow and Szegedy quantitatively improved Yao's result to show that
such languages are in fact in NP/poly (Information Processing Letters, ... more >>>

In this short note we show that for any integer k, there are
languages in the complexity class PP that do not have Boolean
circuits of size $n^k$.

We consider Arthur-Merlin proof systems where (a) Arthur is a probabilistic quasi-polynomial time Turing machine
and (AMQ)(b) Arthur is a probabilistic exponential time Turing machine (AME). We prove two new results related to these classes.

The Turing and many-one completeness notions for $\NP$ have been
previously separated under {\em measure}, {\em genericity}, and {\em
bi-immunity} hypotheses on NP. The proofs of all these results rely
on the existence of a language in NP with almost everywhere hardness.

In this paper we separate the same NP-completeness ... more >>>

In this paper we study program checking (in the
sense of Blum and Kannan) using constant-depth circuits as
checkers. Our focus is on the number of queries made by the
checker to the program being checked and we term this as the
query complexity of the checker for the given ... more >>>