We introduce and study the following natural total search problem, which we call the {\it heavy element avoidance} (Heavy Avoid) problem: for a distribution on $N$ bits specified by a Boolean circuit sampling it, and for some parameter $\delta(N) \ge 1/\poly(N)$ fixed in advance, output an $N$-bit string that has ... more >>>

A dot-product proof (DPP) is a simple probabilistic proof system in which the input statement $x$ and the proof ${\pi}$ are vectors over a finite field $\mathbb{F}$, and the proof is verified by making a single dot-product query $\langle {q},({x} \| {\pi})\rangle$ jointly to ${x}$ and ${\pi}$. A DPP can ... more >>>

This paper studies the interaction of oracles with algorithmic approaches to proving circuit complexity lower bounds, establishing new results on two different kinds of questions.

1. We revisit some prominent open questions in circuit lower bounds, and provide a clean way of viewing them as circuit upper bound questions. Let ... more >>>