We show that there are families of polynomials having small depth-two arithmetic circuits that cannot be expressed by algebraic branching programs of width two. This clarifies the complexity of the problem of computing the product of a sequence of two-by-two matrices, which arises in several
settings.
We introduce the polynomial coefficient matrix and identify maximum rank of this matrix under variable substitution as a complexity measure for multivariate polynomials. We use our techniques to prove
super-polynomial lower bounds against several classes of non-multilinear arithmetic circuits. In particular, we obtain the following results :
$\bullet$ As ... more >>>
We show an exponential separation between two well-studied models of algebraic computation, namely read-once oblivious algebraic branching programs (ROABPs) and multilinear depth three circuits. In particular we show the following:
1. There exists an explicit $n$-variate polynomial computable by linear sized multilinear depth three circuits (with only two product gates) ... more >>>
Let $r \geq 1$ be an integer. Let us call a polynomial $f(x_1, x_2,\ldots, x_N) \in \mathbb{F}[\mathbf{x}]$ as a multi-$r$-ic polynomial if the degree of $f$ with respect to any variable is at most $r$ (this generalizes the notion of multilinear polynomials). We investigate arithmetic circuits in which the output ... more >>>
An algebraic branching program (ABP) A can be modelled as a product expression $X_1\cdot X_2\cdot \dots \cdot X_d$, where $X_1$ and $X_d$ are $1 \times w$ and $w \times 1$ matrices respectively, and every other $X_k$ is a $w \times w$ matrix; the entries of these matrices are linear forms ... more >>>
In 1979 Valiant showed that the complexity class VP_e of families with polynomially bounded formula size is contained in the class VP_s of families that have algebraic branching programs (ABPs) of polynomially bounded size. Motivated by the problem of separating these classes we study the topological closure VP_e-bar, i.e. the ... more >>>
An Algebraic Circuit for a polynomial $P\in F[x_1,\ldots,x_N]$ is a computational model for constructing the polynomial $P$ using only additions and multiplications. It is a \emph{syntactic} model of computation, as opposed to the Boolean Circuit model, and hence lower bounds for this model are widely expected to be easier to ... more >>>
An Algebraic Formula for a polynomial $P\in F[x_1,\ldots,x_N]$ is an algebraic expression for $P(x_1,\ldots,x_N)$ using variables, field constants, additions and multiplications. Such formulas capture an algebraic analog of the Boolean complexity class $\mathrm{NC}^1.$ Proving lower bounds against this model is thus an important problem.
It is known that, to prove ... more >>>
Recently, Forbes, Kumar and Saptharishi [CCC, 2016] proved that there exists an explicit $d^{O(1)}$-variate and degree $d$ polynomial $P_{d} \in VNP$ such that if any depth four circuit $C$ of bounded formal degree $d$ which computes a polynomial of bounded individual degree $O(1)$, that is functionally equivalent to $P_d$, then ... more >>>
Matrix powering, and more generally iterated matrix multiplication, is a fundamental linear algebraic primitive with myriad applications in computer science. Of particular interest is the problem's space complexity as it constitutes the main route towards resolving the $\mathbf{BPL}$ vs. $\mathbf{L}$ problem. The seminal work by Saks and Zhou (FOCS 1995) ... more >>>
