We show that over the field of complex numbers, every homogeneous polynomial of degree $d$ can be approximated (in the border complexity sense) by a depth-$3$ arithmetic circuit of top fan-in at most $d+1$. This is quite surprising since there exist homogeneous polynomials $P$ on $n$ variables of degree $2$, such that any depth-$3$ arithmetic circuit computing $P$ must have top fan-in at least $\Omega(n)$.

As an application, we get a new tradeoff between the top fan-in and formal degree in an approximate analog of the celebrated depth reduction result of Gupta, Kamath, Kayal and Saptharishi [GKKS13]. Formally, we show that if a degree $d$ homogeneous polynomial $P$ can be computed by an arithmetic circuit of size $s$, then for every $t \leq d$, $P$ is in the border of a depth-$3$ circuit of top fan-in $s^{O(t)}$ and formal degree $s^{O(d/t)}$. To the best of our knowledge, the upper bound on the top fan-in in the original proof of [GKKS13] is always at least $s^{O(\sqrt{d})}$, regardless of the formal degree.

Included another simpler proof of the approximate depth reduction result, and fixed some typos.

We show that over the field of complex numbers, every homogeneous polynomial of degree $d$ can be approximated (in the border complexity sense) by a depth-$3$ arithmetic circuit of top fan-in at most $d+1$. This is quite surprising since there exist homogeneous polynomials $P$ on $n$ variables of degree $2$, such that any depth-$3$ arithmetic circuit computing $P$ must have top fan-in at least $\Omega(n)$.

As an application, we get a new tradeoff between the top fan-in and formal degree in an approximate analog of the celebrated depth reduction result of Gupta, Kamath, Kayal and Saptharishi [GKKS13]. Formally, we show that if a degree $d$ homogeneous polynomial $P$ can be computed by an arithmetic circuit of size $s$, then for every $t \leq d$, $P$ is in the border of a depth-$3$ circuit of top fan-in $s^{O(t)}$ and formal degree $s^{O(d/t)}$. To the best of our knowledge, the upper bound on the top fan-in in the original proof of [GKKS13] is always at least $s^{O(\sqrt{d})}$, regardless of the formal degree.