The Parameterized Inapproximability Hypothesis (PIH) is the analog of the PCP theorem in the world of parameterized complexity. It asserts that no FPT algorithm can distinguish a satisfiable 2CSP instance from one which is only $(1-\varepsilon)$-satisfiable (where the parameter is the number of variables) for some constant $0<\varepsilon<1$.

We ... more >>>

We investigate the computational complexity of balance problems for $\{-,\cdot\}$-circuits
computing finite sets of natural numbers. These problems naturally build on problems for integer
expressions and integer circuits studied by Stockmeyer and Meyer (1973),
McKenzie and Wagner (2007),
and Glaßer et al (2010).

Our work shows that the ... more >>>

Color Coding is an algorithmic technique for deciding efficiently
if a given input graph contains a path of a given length (or
another small subgraph of constant tree-width). Applications of the
method in computational biology motivate the study of similar
algorithms for counting the number of copies of a ... more >>>

We show that, assuming the Unique Games Conjecture, it is NP-hard to approximate Max 2-Sat within $\alpha_{LLZ}^{-}+\epsilon$, where $0.9401 < \alpha_{LLZ}^{-} < 0.9402$ is the believed approximation ratio of the algorithm of Lewin, Livnat and Zwick.

This result is surprising considering the fact that balanced instances of Max 2-Sat, i.e. ... more >>>

A fundamental fact in the analysis of randomized algorithm is that when $n$ balls are hashed into $n$ bins independently and uniformly at random, with high probability each bin contains at most $O(\log n / \log \log n)$ balls. In various applications, however, the assumption that a truly random hash ... more >>>

Arithmetic complexity, the study of the cost of computing polynomials via additions and multiplications, is considered (for many good reasons) simpler to understand than Boolean complexity, namely computing Boolean functions via logical gates. And indeed, we seem to have significantly more lower bound techniques and results in arithmetic complexity than ... more >>>

We study the algorithmic problem of multiplying large matrices that are rectangular. We prove that the method that has been used to construct the fastest algorithms for rectangular matrix multiplication cannot give optimal algorithms. In fact, we prove a precise numerical barrier for this method. Our barrier improves the previously ... more >>>

Reducibility between different cryptographic primitives is a fundamental problem in modern cryptography. As one of the primitives, traitor tracing systems help content distributors recover the identities of users that collaborated in the pirate construction by tracing pirate decryption boxes. We present the first negative result on designing efficient traitor tracing ... more >>>

Holographic algorithms are a novel approach to design polynomial time computations using linear superpositions. Most holographic algorithms are designed with basis vectors of dimension 2. Recently Valiant showed that a basis of dimension 4 can be used to solve in P an interesting (restrictive SAT) counting problem mod 7. This ... more >>>

Consider a large database of $n$ data items that need to be stored using $m$ servers.
We study how to encode information so that a large number $k$ of read requests can be performed \textit{in parallel} while the rate remains constant (and ideally approaches one).
This problem is equivalent ... more >>>

Batch proofs are proof systems that convince a verifier that $x_1,\dots, x_t \in L$, for some $NP$ language $L$, with communication that is much shorter than sending the $t$ witnesses. In the case of statistical soundness (where the cheating prover is unbounded but honest prover is efficient), interactive batch proofs ... more >>>

Suppose Alice wants to convince Bob of the correctness of k NP statements. Alice could send k witnesses to Bob, but as k grows the communication becomes prohibitive. Is it possible to convince Bob using smaller communication (without making cryptographic assumptions or bounding the computational power of a malicious Alice)? ... more >>>

A statistical zero-knowledge proof (SZK) for a problem $\Pi$ enables a computationally unbounded prover to convince a polynomial-time verifier that $x \in \Pi$ without revealing any additional information about $x$ to the verifier, in a strong information-theoretic sense.

Suppose, however, that the prover wishes to convince the verifier that $k$ ... more >>>

Many of the keystream generators which are used in practice are LFSR-based in the sense
that they produce the keystream according to a rule $y=C(L(x))$,
where $L(x)$ denotes an internal linear bitstream, produced by a small number of parallel
linear feedback shift registers (LFSRs),
and $C$ denotes ... more >>>

A compression problem is defined with respect to an efficient encoding function $f$; given a string $x$, our task is to find the shortest $y$ such that $f(y) = x$. The obvious brute-force algorithm for solving this compression task on $n$-bit strings runs in time $O(2^{\ell} \cdot t(n))$, where $\ell$ ... more >>>

Let $C$ be a depth-3 $\Sigma\Pi\Sigma$ arithmetic circuit of size $s$,
computing a polynomial $f \in \mathbb{F}[x_1,\ldots, x_n]$ (where $\mathbb{F}$ = $\mathbb{Q}$ or
$\mathbb{C}$) with fan-in of product gates bounded by $d$. We give a
deterministic time $2^d \text{poly}(n,s)$ polynomial identity testing
algorithm to check whether $f \equiv 0$ or ... more >>>

We say a subset $C \subseteq \{1,2,\dots,k\}^n$ is a $k$-hash code (also called $k$-separated) if for every subset of $k$ codewords from $C$, there exists a coordinate where all these codewords have distinct values. Understanding the largest possible rate (in bits), defined as $(\log_2 |C|)/n$, of a $k$-hash code is ... more >>>

For an interger $q\ge 2$, a perfect $q$-hash code $C$ is a block code over $\ZZ_q:=\ZZ/ q\ZZ$ of length $n$ in which every subset $\{\bc_1,\bc_2,\dots,\bc_q\}$ of $q$ elements is separated, i.e., there exists $i\in[n]$ such that $\{\proj_i(\bc_1),\proj_i(\bc_2),\dots,\proj_i(\bc_q)\}=\ZZ_q$, where $\proj_i(\bc_j)$ denotes the $i$th position of $\bc_j$. Finding the maximum size $M(n,q)$ ... more >>>

We show that for any odd $k$ and any instance of the Max-kXOR constraint satisfaction problem, there is an efficient algorithm that finds an assignment satisfying at least a $\frac{1}{2} + \Omega(1/\sqrt{D})$ fraction of constraints, where $D$ is a bound on the number of constraints that each variable occurs in. ... more >>>

We prove that, assuming the Unique Games Conjecture (UGC), every problem in the class of ordering constraint satisfaction problems (OCSP) where each constraint has constant arity is approximation
resistant. In other words, we show that if $\rho$ is the expected fraction of constraints satisfied by a random ordering, then obtaining ... more >>>

We give a polynomial time construction of binary codes with the best
currently known trade-off between rate and error-correction
radius. Specifically, we obtain linear codes over fixed alphabets
that can be list decoded in polynomial time up to the so called
Blokh-Zyablov bound. Our work ... more >>>

Cost register automata (CRA) are one-way finite automata whose transitions have the side effect that a register is set to the result of applying a state-dependent semiring operation to a pair of registers. Here it is shown that CRAs over the semiring (N,min,+) can simulate polynomial time computation, proving along ... more >>>

We present an explicit construction of codes that can be list decoded
from a fraction $(1-\eps)$ of errors in sub-exponential time and which
have rate $\eps/\log^{O(1)}(1/\eps)$. This comes close to the optimal
rate of $\Omega(\eps)$, and is the first sub-exponential complexity
construction to beat the rate of $O(\eps^2)$ achieved by ... more >>>

We consider fault-tolerant computation with formulas composed of noisy Boolean gates with two input wires. In our model all gates fail independently of each other and of the input. When a gate fails, it outputs the opposite of the correct output. It is known that if all gates fail with ... more >>>

Three decades ago, Nisan constructed an explicit pseudorandom generator (PRG) that fools width-$n$ length-$n$ read-once branching programs (ROBPs) with error $\varepsilon$ and seed length $O(\log^2 n + \log n \cdot \log(1/\varepsilon))$ (Combinatorica 1992). Nisan's generator remains the best explicit PRG known for this important model of computation. However, a recent ... more >>>

We present an iterative approach to constructing pseudorandom generators, based on the repeated application of mild pseudorandom restrictions. We use this template to construct pseudorandom generators for combinatorial rectangles and read-once CNFs and a hitting set generator for width-3 branching programs, all of which achieve near optimal seed-length even in ... more >>>

A secret-sharing scheme allows to distribute a secret $s$ among $n$ parties such that only some predefined ``authorized'' sets of parties can reconstruct the secret, and all other ``unauthorized'' sets learn nothing about $s$. The collection of authorized sets is called the access structure. For over 30 years, it was ... more >>>

We give an explicit construction of depth two threshold circuit with polynomial weights and $\tilde{O}(n^5)$ gates that computes an arbitrary threshold function. We also give the construction of such circuits with $O(n^3/\log n)$ gates computing the COMPARISON and CARRY functions, and that with $O(n^4/\log n)$ gates computing the ADDITION function. ... more >>>

Hardness magnification reduces major complexity separations (such as $EXP \not\subseteq NC^1$) to proving lower bounds for some natural problem $Q$ against weak circuit models. Several recent works [OS18, MMW19, CT19, OPS19, CMMW19, Oli19, CJW19a] have established results of this form. In the most intriguing cases, the required lower bound is ... more >>>

In this paper, we construct pseudorandom generators for the class of \emph{combinatorial sums}, a class of functions first studied by \cite{GMRZ13}
and defined as follows: A function $f: [m]^n \rightarrow \{0,1\}$ is said to be a combinatorial sum if there exists functions $f_1, \ldots, f_n: [m] \rightarrow \{0,1\}$ such that
more >>>

We prove that if for some epsilon > 0 NP contains a set that is
DTIME(2^{n^{epsilon}})-bi-immune, then NP contains a set that 2-Turing
complete for NP but not 1-truth-table complete for NP. Lutz and Mayordomo
(LM96) and Ambos-Spies and Bentzien (AB00) previously obtained the
same consequence using strong ... more >>>

We construct a bi-Lipschitz bijection from the Boolean cube to the Hamming ball of equal volume. More precisely, we show that for all even $n \in {\mathbb N}$ there exists an explicit bijection $\psi \colon \{0,1\}^n \to \left\{ x \in \{0,1\}^{n+1} \colon |x| > n/2 \right\}$ such that for every ... more >>>

Let $f$ be a polynomial of degree $d$ in $n$ variables over a finite field $\mathbb{F}$. The polynomial is said to be unbiased if the distribution of $f(x)$ for a uniform input $x \in \mathbb{F}^n$ is close to the uniform distribution over $\mathbb{F}$, and is called biased otherwise. The polynomial ... more >>>

The seminal result of Kahn, Kalai and Linial shows that a coalition of $O(\frac{n}{\log n})$ players can bias the outcome of *any* Boolean function $\{0,1\}^n \to \{0,1\}$ with respect to the uniform measure. We extend their result to arbitrary product measures on $\{0,1\}^n$, by combining their argument with a completely ... more >>>

We study the following basic problem called Bi-Covering. Given a graph $G(V,E)$, find two (not necessarily disjoint) sets $A\subseteq V$ and $B\subseteq V$ such that $A\cup B = V$ and that every edge $e$ belongs to either the graph induced by $A$ or to the graph induced by $B$. The ... more >>>

We survey recent and classical results and techniques concerning binary codes in the large distance (or, high-noise) regime, and the closely related notion of $\varepsilon$-balanced codes. Our (hopefully small-biased) column will mainly discuss encoding, and decoding from adversarial errors.

A previous version of this text originally appeared as an ACM ... more >>>

In the reliable transmission problem, a sender, Alice, wishes to transmit a bit-string x to a remote receiver, Bob, over a binary channel with adversarial noise. The solution to this problem is to encode x using an error correcting code. As it is long known that the distance of binary ... more >>>

Interactive error correcting codes are codes that encode a two party communication protocol to an error-resilient protocol that succeeds even if a constant fraction of the communicated symbols are adversarially corrupted, at the cost of increasing the communication by a constant factor. What is the largest fraction of corruptions that ... more >>>

We show that the bipartite perfect matching problem is in quasi-NC$^2$. That is, it has uniform circuits of quasi-polynomial size and $O(\log^2 n)$ depth. Previously, only an exponential upper bound was known on the size of such circuits with poly-logarithmic depth.

We obtain our result by an almost complete ... more >>>

We prove lower bounds on the redundancy necessary to
represent a set $S$ of objects using a number of bits
close to the information-theoretic minimum $\log_2 |S|$,
while answering various queries by probing few bits. Our
main results are:

\begin{itemize}
\item To represent $n$ ternary values $t \in
\zot^n$ in ... more >>>

In this paper we consider the problem of determining whether an
unknown arithmetic circuit, for which we have oracle access,
computes the identically zero polynomial. Our focus is on depth-3
circuits with a bounded top fan-in. We obtain the following
results.

1. A quasi-polynomial time deterministic black-box identity testing algorithm ... more >>>

We show that any concurrent zero-knowledge protocol for a non-trivial
language (i.e., for a language outside $\BPP$), whose security is proven
via black-box simulation, must use at least $\tilde\Omega(\log n)$
rounds of interaction. This result achieves a substantial improvement
over previous lower bounds, and is the first bound to rule ... more >>>

Garbled RAM, introduced by Lu and Ostrovsky, enables the task of garbling a RAM (Random Access Machine) program directly, there by avoiding the inefficient process of first converting it into a circuit. Garbled RAM can be seen as a RAM analogue of Yao's garbled circuit construction, except that known realizations ... more >>>

We study the problem of identity testing for multilinear $\Spsp(k)$ circuits, i.e. multilinear depth-$4$ circuits with fan-in $k$ at the top $+$ gate. We give the first polynomial-time deterministic
identity testing algorithm for such circuits. Our results also hold in the black-box setting.

The running time of our algorithm is ... more >>>

Rational Identity Testing (RIT) is the decision problem of determining whether or not a given noncommutative rational formula computes zero in the free skew field. It admits a deterministic polynomial-time white-box algorithm [Garg et al., 2016; Ivanyos et al., 2018; Hamada and Hirai, 2021], and a randomized polynomial-time black-box algorithm ... more >>>

Hrube\v{s} and Wigderson (2015) initiated the complexity-theoretic study of noncommutative formulas with inverse gates. They introduced the Rational Identity Testing (RIT) problem which is to decide whether a noncommutative rational formula computes zero in the free skew field. In the white-box setting, deterministic polynomial-time algorithms are known for this problem ... more >>>

The complexity class PPP contains all total search problems many-one reducible to the PIGEON problem, where we are given a succinct encoding of a function mapping n+1 pigeons to n holes, and must output two pigeons that collide in a hole. PPP is one of the “original five” syntactically-defined subclasses ... more >>>

The complexity theory for black-box algorithms, introduced by
Droste et al. (2006), describes common limits on the efficiency of
a broad class of randomised search heuristics. There is an
obvious trade-off between the generality of the black-box model
and the strength of the bounds that can be proven in such ... more >>>

The complexity of the Black-White Pebbling Game has remained an open problem for 30 years. It was devised to capture the power of non-deterministic space bounded computation. Since then it has been continuously studied and applied to problems in diverse areas of computer science including VLSI design and more recently ... more >>>

Let C be a depth-3 circuit with n variables, degree d and top fanin k (called sps(k,d,n) circuits) over base field F.
It is a major open problem to design a deterministic polynomial time blackbox algorithm
that tests if C is identically zero.
Klivans & Spielman (STOC 2001) observed ... more >>>

We study depth three arithmetic circuits with bounded top fanin. We give the first deterministic polynomial time blackbox identity test for depth three circuits with bounded top fanin over the field of rational numbers, thus resolving a question posed by Klivans and Spielman (STOC 2001).

Our main technical result is ... more >>>

We prove that a sufficiently strong parallel repetition theorem for a special case of multiplayer (multiprover) games implies super-linear lower bounds for multi-tape Turing machines with advice. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first connection between parallel repetition and lower bounds for time complexity and the first ... more >>>

We show that degree-$d$ block-symmetric polynomials in
$n$ variables modulo any odd $p$ correlate with parity
exponentially better than degree-$d$ symmetric
polynomials, if $n \ge c d^2 \log d$ and $d \in [0.995
\cdot p^t - 1,p^t)$ for some $t \ge 1$. For these
infinitely many degrees, our result ... more >>>

This paper provides logspace and small circuit depth analogs
of the result of Valiant-Vazirani, which is a randomized (or
nonuniform) reduction from NP to its arithmetic analog ParityP.
We show a similar randomized reduction between the
Boolean classes NL and semi-unbounded fan-in Boolean circuits and
their arithmetic counterparts. These ... more >>>

We initiate the study of Boolean function analysis on high-dimensional expanders. We describe an analog of the Fourier expansion and of the Fourier levels on simplicial complexes, and generalize the FKN theorem to high-dimensional expanders.

Our results demonstrate that a high-dimensional expanding complex X can sometimes serve as a sparse ... more >>>

A Boolean function is called vertex-transitive, if the partition of the Boolean cube into the preimage of 0 and the preimage of 1 is invariant under a vertex-transitive group of isometric transformations of the Boolean cube. Several constructions of vertex-transitive functions and some of their properties are presented.

The sum of the absolute values of the Fourier coefficients of a function $f:\mathbb{F}_2^n \to \mathbb{R}$ is called the spectral norm of $f$. Green and Sanders' quantitative version of Cohen's idempotent theorem states that if the spectral norm of $f:\mathbb{F}_2^n \to \{0,1\}$ is at most $M$, then the support of ... more >>>

We prove a new efficiently computable lower bound on the coefficients of stable homogeneous polynomials and present its algorthmic and combinatorial applications. Our main application is the first poly-time deterministic algorithm which approximates the partition functions associated with
boolean matrices with prescribed row and (uniformly bounded) column sums within simply ... more >>>

We revisit the connection between boosting algorithms and hard-core set constructions discovered by Klivans and Servedio. We present a boosting algorithm with a certain smoothness property that is necessary for hard-core set constructions: the distributions it generates do not put too much weight on any single example. We then use ... more >>>

The best-known lower bounds for the circuit class $\mathcal{TC}^0$ are only slightly super-linear. Similarly, the best-known algorithm for derandomization of this class is an algorithm for quantified derandomization (i.e., a weak type of derandomization) of circuits of slightly super-linear size. In this paper we show that even very mild quantitative ... more >>>

We show that for the blackbox polynomial identity testing (PIT) problem it suffices to study circuits that depend only on the first extremely few variables. One only need to consider size-$s$ degree-$s$ circuits that depend on the first $\log^{\circ c} s$ variables (where $c$ is a constant and we are ... more >>>

VBP is the class of polynomial families that can be computed by the determinant of a symbolic matrix of the form $A_0 + \sum_{i=1}^n A_ix_i$ where the size of each $A_i$ is polynomial in the number of variables (equivalently, computable by polynomial-sized algebraic branching programs (ABP)). A major open problem ... more >>>

In (ToCT’20) Kumar surprisingly proved that every polynomial can be approximated as a sum of a constant and a product of linear polynomials. In this work, we prove the converse of Kumar's result which ramifies in a surprising new formulation of Waring rank and border Waring rank. From this conclusion, ... more >>>

BosonSampling, which we proposed three years ago, is a scheme for using linear-optical networks to solve sampling problems that appear to be intractable for a classical computer. In a recent manuscript, Gogolin et al. claimed that even an ideal BosonSampling device's output would be "operationally indistinguishable" from a uniform random ... more >>>

In this work we study bounded collusion protocols (BCPs) recently introduced in the context of secret sharing by Kumar, Meka, and Sahai (FOCS 2019). These are multi-party communication protocols on $n$ parties where in each round a subset of $p$-parties (the collusion bound) collude together and write a function of ... more >>>

In this paper we study the complexity of Bounded Color
Multiplicity Graph Isomorphism (BCGI): the input is a pair of
vertex-colored graphs such that the number of vertices of a given
color in an input graph is bounded by $b$. We show that BCGI is in the
#L hierarchy ... more >>>

Constant-depth arithmetic circuits have been defined and studied
in [AAD97,ABL98]; these circuits yield the function classes #AC^0
and GapAC^0. These function classes in turn provide new
characterizations of the computational power of threshold circuits,
and provide a link between the circuit classes AC^0 ... more >>>

A Boolean function $f: \{0,1\}^n \to \{0,1\}$ is weighted symmetric if there exist a function $g: \mathbb{Z} \to \{0,1\}$ and integers $w_0, w_1, \ldots, w_n$ such that $f(x_1,\ldots,x_n) = g(w_0+\sum_{i=1}^n w_i x_i)$ holds.

In this paper, we present algorithms for the circuit satisfiability problem of bounded depth circuits with AND, ... more >>>

Let x be a random vector coming from any k-wise independent distribution over {-1,1}^n. For an n-variate degree-2 polynomial p, we prove that E[sgn(p(x))] is determined up to an additive epsilon for k = poly(1/epsilon). This answers an open question of Diakonikolas et al. (FOCS 2009). Using standard constructions of ... more >>>

We show that any distribution on {-1,1}^n that is k-wise independent fools any halfspace h with error \eps for k = O(\log^2(1/\eps)/\eps^2). Up to logarithmic factors, our result matches a lower bound by Benjamini, Gurel-Gurevich, and Peled (2007) showing that k = \Omega(1/(\eps^2 \cdot \log(1/\eps))). Using standard constructions of k-wise ... more >>>

Let $D$ be a $b$-wise independent distribution over
$\{0,1\}^m$. Let $E$ be the ``noise'' distribution over
$\{0,1\}^m$ where the bits are independent and each bit is 1
with probability $\eta/2$. We study which tests $f \colon
\{0,1\}^m \to [-1,1]$ are $\e$-fooled by $D+E$, i.e.,
$|\E[f(D+E)] - \E[f(U)]| \le \e$ where ... more >>>

Let $k=k(n)$ be the largest integer such that there
exists a $k$-wise uniform distribution over $\zo^n$ that
is supported on the set $S_m := \{x \in \zo^n : \sum_i
x_i \equiv 0 \bmod m\}$, where $m$ is any integer. We
show that $\Omega(n/m^2 \log m) \le k \le 2n/m + ... more >>>

We say that a function $f\colon \Sigma^n \to \{0, 1\}$ is $\epsilon$-fooled by $k$-wise indistinguishability if $f$ cannot distinguish with advantage $\epsilon$ between any two distributions $\mu$ and $\nu$ over $\Sigma^n$ whose projections to any $k$ symbols are identical. We study the class of functions $f$ that are fooled by ... more >>>

A pair of sources $\mathbf{X},\mathbf{Y}$ over $\{0,1\}^n$ are $k$-indistinguishable if their projections to any $k$ coordinates are identically distributed. Can some $\mathit{AC^0}$ function distinguish between two such sources when $k$ is big, say $k=n^{0.1}$? Braverman's theorem (Commun. ACM 2011) implies a negative answer when $\mathbf{X}$ is uniform, whereas Bogdanov et ... more >>>

Using John's Theorem, we prove a lower bound on the bounded rigidity of a sign matrix, defined as the Hamming distance between this matrix and the set of low-rank, real-valued matrices with entries bounded in absolute value. For Hadamard matrices, our asymptotic leading constant is tighter than known results by ... more >>>

In this paper we introduce a variant of pushdown dimension called bounded pushdown (BPD) dimension, that measures the density of information contained in a sequence, relative to a BPD automata, i.e. a finite state machine equipped with an extra infinite memory stack, with the additional requirement that every input symbol ... more >>>

This paper introduces a new model of computation for describing the
complexity of NP-approximation problems. The results show that the
complexity of NP-approximation problems can be characterized by classes of
multi-valued functions computed by nondeterministic polynomial time Turing
machines with a bounded number of oracle queries to an NP-complete
language. ... more >>>

Relativization is one of the most fundamental concepts in complexity theory, which explains the difficulty of resolving major open problems. In this paper, we propose a weaker notion of relativization called *bounded relativization*. For a complexity class $C$, we say that a statement is *$C$-relativizing* if the statement holds relative ... more >>>

We study a variant of the classical circuit-lower-bound problems: proving lower bounds for sampling distributions given random bits. We prove a lower bound of $1-1/n^{\Omega(1)}$ on the statistical distance between (i) the output distribution of any small constant-depth (a.k.a.~$\mathrm{AC}^0$) circuit $f : \{0,1\}^{\mathrm{poly}(n)} \to \{0,1\}^n$, and (ii) the uniform distribution ... more >>>

We prove that there is a constant $K$ such that \emph{Tseitin} formulas for an undirected graph $G$ requires proofs of
size $2^{\mathrm{tw}(G)^{\Omega(1/d)}}$ in depth-$d$ Frege systems for $d<\frac{K \log n}{\log \log n}$, where $\tw(G)$ is the treewidth of $G$. This extends H{\aa}stad recent lower bound for the grid graph ... more >>>

We prove a quasi-polynomial lower bound on the size of bounded-depth
Frege proofs of the pigeonhole principle $PHP^{m}_n$ where
$m= (1+1/{\polylog n})n$.
This lower bound qualitatively matches the known quasi-polynomial-size
bounded-depth Frege proofs for these principles.
Our technique, which uses a switching lemma argument like other lower bounds
for ... more >>>

Restricted branching programs are considered by the investigation
of relationships between complexity classes of Boolean functions.
Read-once ordered branching programs (or OBDDs) form the most restricted class
of this computation model.
Since the problem of proving exponential lower bounds on the complexity
for general probabilistic OBDDs is open so ... more >>>

Tree-width is a well-studied parameter of structures that measures their similarity to a tree. Many important NP-complete problems, such as Boolean satisfiability (SAT), are tractable on bounded tree-width instances. In this paper we focus on the canonical PSPACE-complete problem QBF, the fully-quantified version of SAT. It was shown by Pan ... more >>>

We show that the basic semidefinite programming relaxation value of any constraint satisfaction problem can be computed in NC; that is, in parallel polylogarithmic time and polynomial work. As a complexity-theoretic consequence we get that MIP1$[k,c,s] \subseteq $ PSPACE provided $s/c \leq (.62-o(1))k/2^k$, resolving a question of Austrin, Håstad, and ... more >>>

We study the complexity of multiplication in noncommutative group algebras which is closely related to the complexity of matrix multiplication. We characterize such semisimple group algebras of the minimal bilinear complexity and show nontrivial lower bounds for the rest of the group algebras. These lower bounds are built on the ... more >>>

In the recent paper of~\cite{BR16}, the authors show that, for any constant $10^{-15} > \varepsilon > 0$ the communication complexity of $\varepsilon$-approximate Nash equilibria in $2$-player $n \times n$ games is $n^{\Omega(\varepsilon)}$, resolving the long open problem of whether or not there exists a polylogarithmic communication protocol. In this paper ... more >>>

It is shown that high order feedforward neural nets of constant depth with piecewise
polynomial activation functions and arbitrary real weights can be simulated for boolean
inputs and outputs by neural nets of a somewhat larger size and depth with heaviside
gates and weights ... more >>>

We analyze the number of payoff queries needed to compute approximate correlated equilibria. For multi-player, binary-choice games, we show logarithmic upper and lower bounds on the query complexity of approximate correlated equilibrium. For well-supported approximate correlated equilibrium (a restriction where a player's behavior must always be approximately optimal, in the ... more >>>

We present upper bounds on the size of codes that are locally
testable by querying only two input symbols. For linear codes, we
show that any $2$-locally testable code with minimal distance
$\delta n$ over a finite field $F$ cannot have more than
$|F|^{3/\delta}$ codewords. This result holds even ... more >>>

We study Locally Testable Codes (LTCs) that can be tested by making two queries to the tested word using an affine test. That is, we consider LTCs over a finite field F, with codeword testers that only use tests of the form $av_i + bv_j = c$, where v is ... more >>>

Traditionally, communication networks are composed of
routing nodes, which relay and duplicate data. Work in
recent years has shown that for the case of multicast, an
improvement in both rate and code-construction complexity can be
gained by replacing these routing nodes by linear coding
nodes. These nodes transmit linear combinations ... more >>>

We prove that any monotone switching network solving directed connectivity on $N$ vertices must have size $N^{\Omega(\log N)}$

We study pairs of families ${\cal A},{\cal B}\subseteq
2^{\{1,\ldots,r\}}$ such that $|A\cap B|\in L$ for any
$A\in{\cal A}$, $B\in{\cal B}$. We are interested in the maximal
product $|{\cal A}|\cdot|{\cal B}|$, given $r$ and $L$. We give
asymptotically optimal bounds for $L$ containing only elements
of $s<q$ residue classes modulo ... more >>>

The Kolmogorov complexity function of an infinite word $\xi$ maps a natural
number to the complexity $K(\xi|n)$ of the $n$-length prefix of $\xi$. We
investigate the maximally achievable complexity function if $\xi$ is taken
from a constructively describable set of infinite words. Here we are
interested ... more >>>

We prove that BPP has Lutz's p-dimension at most 1/2 unless BPP equals EXP.
Next we show that BPP has Lutz's p-dimension zero unless BPP equals EXP
on infinitely many input lengths.
We also prove that BPP has measure zero in the smaller complexity
class ... more >>>

We initiate the study of the relationship between two complexity classes, BQP
(Bounded-Error Quantum Polynomial-Time) and PPAD (Polynomial Parity Argument,
Directed). We first give a conjecture that PPAD is contained in BQP, and show
a necessary and sufficient condition for the conjecture to hold. Then we prove
that the conjecture ... more >>>

The relationship between BQP and PH has been an open problem since the earliest days of quantum computing. We present evidence that quantum computers can solve problems outside the entire polynomial hierarchy, by relating this question to topics in circuit complexity, pseudorandomness, and Fourier analysis.

First, we show that there ... more >>>

In this paper we give a direct proof of $N_0=N_0^\prime$, i.e., the equivalence of
uniform $NC^1$ based on different recursion principles: one is OR-AND complete
binary tree (in depth $\log n$) and the other is the recursion on notation with value
bounded in $[0,k]$ and $|x|(=n)$ many ... more >>>

Restricted branching programs capture various complexity measures like space in Turing machines or length of proofs in proof systems. In this paper, we focus on the application in the proof complexity that was discovered by Lovasz et al. '95 who showed the equivalence between regular Resolution and read-once branching programs ... more >>>

We highlight a common theme in four relatively recent works
that establish remarkable results by an iterative approach.
Starting from a trivial construct,
each of these works applies an ingeniously designed
sequence of iterations that yields the desired result,
which is highly non-trivial. Furthermore, in each iteration,
more >>>

In this paper we compare hardness of two well known problems: the Diffie-Hellman problem and the root finding problem. We prove that in any cyclic group computing Diffie-Hellman is not weaker than root finding if certain circumstances are met. As will be discussed in the paper this theorem can affect ... more >>>

This paper shows that the use of ``local symmetry breaking'' can dramatically reduce the length of propositional refutations. For each of the three propositional proof systems known as (i) treelike resolution, (ii) resolution, and (iii) k-DNF resolution, we describe families of unsatisfiable formulas in conjunctive normal form (CNF) that are ... more >>>

Information complexity is one of the most powerful tools to prove information-theoretical lower bounds, with broad applications in communication complexity and streaming algorithms. A core notion in information complexity analysis is the Shannon entropy. Though it has some convenient properties, such as chain rules, Shannon entropy still has inherent limitations. ... more >>>

For Boolean functions that are $\epsilon$-far from the set of linear functions, we study the lower bound on the rejection probability (denoted $\textsc{rej}(\epsilon)$) of the linearity test suggested by Blum, Luby and Rubinfeld. The interest in this problem is partly due to its relation to PCP constructions and hardness of ... more >>>

The threshold degree of a Boolean function $f$ is the minimum degree of
a real polynomial $p$ that represents $f$ in sign: $f(x)\equiv\mathrm{sgn}\; p(x)$. In a seminal 1969
monograph, Minsky and Papert constructed a polynomial-size constant-depth
$\{\wedge,\vee\}$-circuit in $n$ variables with threshold degree $\Omega(n^{1/3}).$ This bound underlies ... more >>>

We prove that 3-query linear locally correctable codes over the Reals of dimension $d$ require block length $n>d^{2+\lambda}$ for some fixed, positive $\lambda >0$. Geometrically, this means that if $n$ vectors in $R^d$ are such that each vector is spanned by a linear number of disjoint triples of others, then ... more >>>

Under the Strong Exponential Time Hypothesis, an integer linear program with $n$ Boolean-valued variables and $m$ equations cannot be solved in $c^n$ time for any constant $c < 2$. If the domain of the variables is relaxed to $[0,1]$, the associated linear program can of course be solved in polynomial ... more >>>

We study the communication rate of coding schemes for interactive communication that transform any two-party interactive protocol into a protocol that is robust to noise.

Recently, Haeupler (FOCS '14) showed that if an $\epsilon > 0$ fraction of transmissions are corrupted, adversarially or randomly, then it is possible to ... more >>>

Consider the multiparty communication complexity model where there are n processors, each receiving as input a row of an n by n matrix M with entries in {0, 1}, and in each round each party can broadcast a single bit to all other parties (this is known as the BCAST(1) ... more >>>

Polynomial Identity Testing (PIT) algorithms have focused on
polynomials computed either by small alternation-depth arithmetic circuits, or by read-restricted
formulas. Read-once polynomials (ROPs) are computed by read-once
formulas (ROFs) and are the simplest of read-restricted polynomials.
Building structures above these, we show the following:
\begin{enumerate}
\item A deterministic polynomial-time non-black-box ... more >>>

Injective one-way trapdoor functions are one of the most fundamental cryptographic primitives. In this work we give a novel construction of injective trapdoor functions based on oblivious transfer for long strings.

Our main result is to show that any 2-message statistically sender-private semi-honest oblivious transfer (OT) for ... more >>>

Strategy extraction is of paramount importance for quantified Boolean formulas (QBF), both in solving and proof complexity. It extracts (counter)models for a QBF from a run of the solver resp. the proof of the QBF, thereby allowing to certify the solver's answer resp. establish soundness of the system. So far ... more >>>

We investigate non-parametric unit-demand pricing problems, in which the goal is to find revenue maximizing prices for a set of products based on consumer profiles obtained, e.g., from an e-Commerce website. A consumer profile consists of a number of non-zero budgets and a ranking of all the products the consumer ... more >>>

The Unique Games conjecture (UGC) has emerged in recent years as the starting point for several optimal inapproximability results. While for none of these results a reverse reduction to Unique Games is known, the assumption of bijective projections in the Label Cover instance seems critical in these proofs. In this ... more >>>