We consider the question of whether average-case PPAD hardness can be based on standard cryptographic assumptions, such as the existence of one-way functions or public-key encryption. This question is particularly well-motivated in light of new devastating attacks on obfuscation candidates and their underlying building blocks, which are currently the only ... more >>>

We prove that with high probability over the choice of a random graph $G$ from the Erd\H{o}s-R\'enyi distribution $G(n,1/2)$, the $n^{O(d)}$-time degree $d$ Sum-of-Squares semidefinite programming relaxation for the clique problem will give a value of at least $n^{1/2-c(d/\log n)^{1/2}}$ for some constant $c>0$.
This yields a nearly tight ... more >>>

Given an unsatisfiable $k$-CNF formula $\phi$ we consider two complexity measures in Resolution: width and total space. The width is the minimal $W$ such that there exists a Resolution refutation of $\phi$ with clauses of at most $W$ literals. The total space is the minimal size $T$ of a memory ... more >>>