For ordinary circuits with a fixed upper bound on the maximal fanin
of gates it has been shown that logarithmic redundancy is necessary and
sufficient to overcome random hardware faults.
Here, we consider the same question for unbounded fanin circuits that
in the noiseless case can compute ... more >>>

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 extend the study of non-interactive statistical zero-knowledge
proofs. Our main focus is to compare the class NISZK of problems
possessing such non-interactive proofs to the class SZK of problems
possessing interactive statistical zero-knowledge proofs. Along these
lines, we first show that if statistical zero knowledge is non-trivial
then so ... more >>>

We propose a candidate Lasserre integrality gap construction for the Unique Games problem.
Our construction is based on a suggestion in [KM STOC'11] wherein the authors study the complexity of approximately solving a system of linear equations over reals and suggest it as an avenue towards a (positive) resolution ... more >>>

We suggest a candidate one-way function using combinatorial
constructs such as expander graphs. These graphs are used to
determine a sequence of small overlapping subsets of input bits,
to which a hard-wired random predicate is applied.
Thus, the function is extremely easy to evaluate:
all that is needed ... more >>>

Tree codes are combinatorial structures introduced by Schulman (STOC 1993) as key ingredients in interactive coding schemes. Asymptotically-good tree codes are long known to exist, yet their explicit construction remains a notoriously hard open problem. Even proposing a plausible construction, without the burden of proof, is difficult and the defining ... more >>>

Pseudorandom functions (PRFs) play a fundamental role in symmetric-key cryptography. However, they are inherently complex and cannot be implemented in the class $\mathrm{AC}^0( \mathrm{MOD}_2)$. Weak pseudorandom functions (weak PRFs) do not suffer from this complexity limitation, yet they suffice for many cryptographic applications. We study the minimal complexity requirements for ... more >>>

We prove that every disjoint NP-pair is polynomial-time, many-one equivalent to
the canonical disjoint NP-pair of some propositional proof system. Therefore, the degree structure of the class of disjoint NP-pairs and of all canonical pairs is
identical. Secondly, we show that this degree structure is not superficial: Assuming there exist ... more >>>

The purpose of this note is to state and prove a lower bound on the capacity of a real stable polynomial $p(x)$ which is based only on its value and gradient at $x=1$. This result implies a sharp improvement to a similar inequality proved by Linial-Samorodnitsky-Wigderson in 2000. Such inequalities ... more >>>

Non-malleable codes, introduced by Dziembowski, Pietrzak and Wichs (ICS 2010), encode messages $s$ in a manner so that tampering the codeword causes the decoder to either output $s$ or a message that is independent of $s$. While this is an impossible goal to achieve against unrestricted tampering functions, rather surprisingly ... more >>>

We devise a deterministic interactive coding scheme with rate $1-O(\sqrt{\varepsilon\log(1/\varepsilon)})$ against $\varepsilon$-fraction of adversarial errors. The rate we obtain is tight by a result of Kol and Raz (STOC 2013). Prior to this work, deterministic coding schemes for any constant fraction $\varepsilon>0$ of adversarial errors could obtain rate no larger ... more >>>

A one-way function is a function that is easy to compute but hard to invert *on average*. We establish the first characterization of a one-way function by *worst-case* hardness assumptions, by introducing a natural meta-computational problem whose NP-hardness (and the worst-case hardness of NP) characterizes the existence of a one-way ... more >>>

The study of branching programs for the Tree Evaluation Problem, introduced by S. Cook et al. (TOCT 2012), remains one of the most promising approaches to separating L from P. Given a label in $[k]$ at each leaf of a complete binary tree and an explicit function in $[k]^2 \to ... more >>>

The study of space-bounded computation has drawn extensively from ideas and results in the field of communication complexity. Catalytic Computation (Buhrman, Cleve, Koucký, Loff and Speelman, STOC 2013) studies the power of bounded space augmented with a pre-filled hard drive that can be used non-destructively during the computation. Presently, many ... more >>>

We prove that to store n bits x so that each
prefix-sum query Sum(i) := sum_{k < i} x_k can be answered
by non-adaptively probing q cells of log n bits, one needs
memory > n + n/log^{O(q)} n.

Our bound matches a recent upper bound of n +
n/log^{Omega(q)} ... more >>>

In this work, we introduce an online model for communication complexity. Analogous to how online algorithms receive their input piece-by-piece, our model presents one of the players Bob his input piece-by-piece, and has the players Alice and Bob cooperate to compute a result it presents Bob with the next piece. ... more >>>

We introduce and study Certificate Game complexity, a measure of complexity based on the probability of winning a game where two players are given inputs with different function values and are asked to output some index $i$ such that $x_i\neq y_i$, in a zero-communication setting.

We give upper and lower ... more >>>

Let $\mathcal{L}$ be a language that can be decided in linear space and let $\epsilon >0$ be any constant. Let $\mathcal{A}$ be the exponential hardness assumption that for every $n$, membership in $\mathcal{L}$ for inputs of length~$n$ cannot be decided by circuits of size smaller than $2^{\epsilon n}$.
We ... more >>>

We propose an application for near-term quantum devices: namely, generating cryptographically certified random bits, to use (for example) in proof-of-stake cryptocurrencies. Our protocol repurposes the existing "quantum supremacy" experiments, based on random circuit sampling, that Google and USTC have successfully carried out starting in 2019. We show that, whenever the ... more >>>

The \textsc{equality} problem is usually one's first encounter with
communication complexity and is one of the most fundamental problems in the
field. Although its deterministic and randomized communication complexity
were settled decades ago, we find several new things to say about the
problem by focusing on two subtle aspects. The ... more >>>

In this paper, we introduce and develop the method of certifying polynomials for proving $\mathrm{AC}^0[\oplus]$ circuit lower bounds.

We use this method to show that Approximate Majority cannot be computed by $\mathrm{AC}^0[\oplus]$ circuits of size $n^{1+o(1)}$. This implies a separation between the power of $\mathrm{AC}^0[\oplus]$ circuits of near-linear size and ... more >>>

Abstract. It is known that random k-SAT formulas with at least
(2^k*ln2)*n random clauses are unsatisfiable with high probability. This
result is simply obtained by bounding the expected number of satisfy-
ing assignments of a random k-SAT instance by an expression tending
to 0 when n, the number of variables ... more >>>

We draw two incomplete, biased maps of challenges in
computational complexity lower bounds. Our aim is to put
these challenges in perspective, and to present some
connections which do not seem widely known.

We study the problem of assigning different communication channels to
acces points in a wireless Local Area Network. Each access point will
be assigned a specific radio frequency channel. Since channels with
similar frequencies interfere, it is desirable to assign far apart
channels (frequencies) to nearby access points. Our goal ... more >>>

Consider a PPT two-party protocol ?=(A,B) in which the parties get no private inputs and obtain outputs O^A,O^B?{0,1}, and let V^A and V^B denote the parties’ individual views. Protocol ? has ?-agreement if Pr[O^A=O^B]=1/2+?. The leakage of ? is the amount of information a party obtains about the event {O^A=O^B}; ... more >>>

The Stepanov-Bombieri proof of the Hasse-Weil bound also gives non-trivial bounds on the bias of character sums over curves with small genus, for any low-degree function $f$ that is not completely biased. For high genus curves, and in particular for curves used in AG codes over constant size fields, the ... more >>>

We study projective dimension, a graph parameter (denoted by $pd(G)$ for a graph $G$), introduced by (Pudlak, Rodl 1992), who showed that proving lower bounds for $pd(G_f)$ for bipartite graphs $G_f$ associated with a Boolean function $f$ imply size lower bounds for branching programs computing $f$. Despite several attempts (Pudlak, ... more >>>

The complexity class ModL was defined by Arvind and Vijayaraghavan in [AV04] (more precisely in Definition 1.4.1, Vij08],[Definition 3.1, AV]). In this paper, under the assumption that NL =UL, we show that for every language $L\in ModL$ there exists a function $f\in \sharpL$ and a function $g\in FL$ such that ... more >>>

Two matrices are said to be principal minor equivalent if they have equal
corresponding principal minors of all orders. We give a characterization of
principal minor equivalence and a deterministic polynomial time algorithm to
check if two given matrices are principal minor equivalent. Earlier such
results were known for ... more >>>

We exactly characterize the average-case complexity of the polynomial-time hierarchy (PH) by the worst-case (meta-)complexity of GapMINKT(PH), i.e., an approximation version of the problem of determining if a given string can be compressed to a short PH-oracle efficient program. Specifically, we establish the following equivalence:

DistPH is contained in ... more >>>

A central open problem in complexity theory concerns the question of whether all efficient randomized algorithms can be simulated by efficient deterministic algorithms. We consider this problem in the context of promise problems (i.e,. the $\prBPP$ v.s. $\prP$ problem) and show that for all sufficiently large constants $c$, the following ... more >>>

A $d$-dimensional simplicial complex $X$ is said to support a direct product tester if any locally consistent function defined on its $k$-faces (where $k\ll d$) necessarily come from a function over its vertices. More precisely, a direct product tester has a distribution $\mu$ over pairs of $k$-faces $(A,A')$, and given ... more >>>

Non-signaling games are an important object of study in the theory of computation, for their role both in quantum information and in (classical) cryptography. In this work, we study the behavior of these games under parallel repetition.

We show that, unlike the situation both for classical games and for two-player ... more >>>

Does every Boolean tautology have a short propositional-calculus proof? Here, a propositional-calculus (i.e., Frege) proof is any proof starting from a set of axioms and deriving new Boolean formulas using a fixed set of sound derivation rules. Establishing any super-polynomial size lower bound on Frege proofs (in terms of the ... more >>>

We provide a characterization of pseudoentropy in terms of hardness of sampling: Let $(X,B)$ be jointly distributed random variables such that $B$ takes values in a polynomial-sized set. We show that $B$ is computationally indistinguishable from a random variable of higher Shannon entropy given $X$ if and only if there ... more >>>

Motivated by the question of how to define an analog of interactive
proofs in the setting of logarithmic time- and space-bounded
computation, we study complexity classes defined in terms of
operators quantifying over oracles. We obtain new
characterizations of $\NCe$, $\L$, $\NL$, $\NP$, ... more >>>

In this paper we investigate the following two questions:

Q1: Do there exist optimal proof systems for a given language L?
Q2: Do there exist complete problems for a given promise class C?

For concrete languages L (such as TAUT or SAT and concrete promise classes C (such as NP ... more >>>

We study boolean constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs) $\mathrm{Max}\text{-}\mathrm{CSP}^f_n$ for all predicates $f: \{ 0, 1 \} ^k \to \{ 0, 1 \}$. In these problems, given an integer $v$ and a list of constraints over $n$ boolean variables, each obtained by applying $f$ to a sequence of literals, we wish ... more >>>

We study the problem of whether \emph{persistent} randomness is helpful for polynomial-time algorithms that only use \emph{logarithmic} space. In more detail, we consider the class $\searchBPLs$, of \emph{search}-problems that are solvable by a polynomial-time Probabilistic Logspace TMs with \emph{2-way} access (i.e., with multiple, as opposed to one-time, access) to a ... more >>>

Given linear representations M_1 and M_2 of matroids over a field F, we consider the problem (denoted by ECLR), of checking if M_1 and M_2 represent the same matroid. We show that when F=Z_2, ECLR{Z_2} is complete for $\parityL$. Let M_1,M_2\in Q ^{m\times n} be two matroid linear representations given ... more >>>

We prove optimal concentration of measure for lifted functions on high dimensional expanders (HDX). Let $X$ be a $k$-dimensional HDX. We show for any $i \leq k$ and function $f: X(i) \to [0,1]$:
\[
\Pr_{s \in X(k)}\left[\left|\underset{{t \subseteq s}}{\mathbb{E}}[f(t)] - \mu \right| \geq \varepsilon \right] \leq \exp\left(-\varepsilon^2 \frac{k}{i}\right).
\]
Using ... more >>>

The Chinese Remainder Theorem states that a positive
integer m is uniquely specified by its remainder modulo
k relatively prime integers p_1,...,p_k, provided
m < \prod_{i=1}^k p_i. Thus the residues of m modulo
relatively prime integers p_1 < p_2 < ... < p_n
form a redundant representation of m if ... more >>>

Recently, perfect matching in bounded planar cutwidth bipartite graphs
$BGGM$ was shown to be in ACC$^0$ by Hansen et al.. They also conjectured that
the problem is in AC$^0$.
In this paper, we disprove their conjecture by showing that the problem is
not in AC$^0[p^{\alpha}]$ for every prime $p$. ... more >>>

In this paper we extend the area of applications of
the Abstract Harmonic Analysis to the field of Boolean function complexity.
In particular, we extend the class of functions to which
a spectral technique developed in a series of works of the first author
can be applied.
This extension ... more >>>

We introduce a new and very natural algebraic proof system, which has tight connections to (algebraic) circuit complexity. In particular, we show that any super-polynomial lower bound on any Boolean tautology in our proof system implies that the permanent does not have polynomial-size algebraic circuits ($VNP \neq VP$). As a ... more >>>

The best known circuit lower bounds against unrestricted circuits remained around $3n$ for several decades. Moreover, the only known technique for proving lower bounds in this model, gate elimination, is inherently limited to proving lower bounds of less than $5n$. In this work, we suggest a first non-gate-elimination approach for ... more >>>

In 1977 Valiant proposed a graph theoretical method for proving lower
bounds on algebraic circuits with gates computing linear functions.
He used this method to reduce the problem of proving
lower bounds on circuits with linear gates to to proving lower bounds
on the rigidity of a matrix, a ... more >>>

Santhanam (2007) proved that MA/1 does not have circuits of size $n^k$. We translate his result to the heuristic setting by proving that there is a constant $a$ such that for any $k$, there is a language in HeurMA that cannot be solved by circuits of size $n^k$ on more ... more >>>

The Minimum Circuit Size Problem (MCSP) asks if a given truth table of a Boolean function $f$ can be computed by a Boolean circuit of size at most $\theta$, for a given parameter $\theta$. We improve several circuit lower bounds for MCSP, using pseudorandom generators (PRGs) that are local; a ... more >>>

We show that for each k > 0, MA/1 (MA with 1 bit of advice) does not have circuits of size n^k. This implies the first superlinear circuit lower bounds for the promise versions of the classes MA, AM and ZPP_{||}^{NP}.

We extend our main result in several ways. For ... more >>>

We prove that if every problem in $NP$ has $n^k$-size circuits for a fixed constant $k$, then for every $NP$-verifier and every yes-instance $x$ of length $n$ for that verifier, the verifier's search space has an $n^{O(k^3)}$-size witness circuit: a witness for $x$ that can be encoded with a circuit ... more >>>

We prove that $T_{NC^1}$, the true universal first-order theory in the language containing names for all uniform $NC^1$ algorithms, cannot prove that for sufficiently large $n$, SAT is not computable by circuits of size $n^{2kc}$ where $k\geq 1, c\geq 4$ unless each function $f\in SIZE(n^k)$ can be approximated by formulas ... more >>>

We investigate the power of Algebraic Branching Programs (ABPs) augmented with help polynomials, and constant-depth Boolean circuits augmented with help functions. We relate the problem of proving explicit lower bounds in both these models to the Remote Point Problem (introduced by Alon, Panigrahy, and Yekhanin (RANDOM '09)). More precisely, proving ... more >>>

We study the complexity of the circuit minimization problem:
given the truth table of a Boolean function f and a parameter s, decide
whether f can be realized by a Boolean circuit of size at most s. We argue
why this problem is unlikely to be in P (or ... more >>>

Most of the known lower bounds for binary Boolean circuits with unrestricted depth are proved by the gate elimination method. The most efficient known algorithms for the #SAT problem on binary Boolean circuits use similar case analyses to the ones in gate elimination. Chen and Kabanets recently showed that the ... more >>>

We consider the computational power of constant width polynomial
size cylindrical circuits and nondeterministic branching programs.
We show that every function computed by a Pi2 o MOD o AC0 circuit
can also be computed by a constant width polynomial size cylindrical
nondeterministic branching program (or cylindrical circuit) and
that ... more >>>

Given a Boolean circuit $C$, we wish to convert it to a circuit $C'$ that computes the same function as $C$ even if some of its gates suffer from adversarial short circuit errors, i.e., their output is replaced by the value of one of their inputs [KLM97]. Can we ... more >>>

We consider boolean circuits in which every gate may compute an arbitrary boolean function of $k$ other gates, for a parameter $k$. We give an explicit function $f:\bits^n \rightarrow \bits$ that requires at least $\Omega(\log^2 n)$ non-input gates when $k = 2n/3$. When the circuit is restricted to being depth ... more >>>

In this paper we present a new proof system framework CLIP (Cumulation Linear Induction Proposition) for propositional model counting. A CLIP proof firstly involves a circuit, calculating the cumulative function (or running count) of models counted up to a point, and secondly a propositional proof arguing for the correctness of ... more >>>

Håstad established that any predicate $P \subseteq \{0,1\}^m$ containing parity of width at least three is approximation resistant for almost satisfiable instances. However, in comparison to for example the approximation hardness of Max-3SAT, the result only holds for almost satisfiable instances. This limitation was addressed by O'Donnell, Wu, and Huang ... more >>>

To date, we know only a few handcrafted quantified Boolean formulas (QBFs) that are hard for central QBF resolution systems such as Q and QU, and only one specific QBF family to separate Q and QU.

Here we provide a general method to construct hard formulas for Q and ... more >>>

In communication complexity, two players each have an input and they wish to compute some function of the joint inputs. This has been the object of much study and a wide variety of lower bound methods have been introduced to address the problem of showing lower bounds on communication. Recently, ... more >>>

Promise problems were mainly studied in quantum automata theory. Here we focus on state complexity of classical automata for promise problems. First, it was known that there is a family of unary promise problems solvable by quantum automata by using a single qubit, but the number of states required by ... more >>>

We demonstrate a two-player communication problem that can be solved in the one-way quantum model by a 0-error protocol of cost O(log n) but requires exponentially more communication in the classical interactive (two-way) model.

Would physical laws permit the construction of computing machines
that are capable of solving some problems much faster than the
standard computational model? Recent evidence suggests that this
might be the case in the quantum world. But the question is of
great interest even in the realm of classical physics. ... more >>>

We study the relative advantage of classical and quantum distinguishers of bounded query complexity over $n$-bit strings, focusing on the case of a single quantum query. A construction of Aaronson and Ambainis (STOC 2015) yields a pair of distributions that is $\epsilon$-distinguishable by a one-query quantum algorithm, but $O(\epsilon k/\sqrt{n})$-indistinguishable ... more >>>

Matroid intersection has a known polynomial time algorithm using an
oracle. We generalize this result to delta-matroids that do not have
equality as a restriction, and give a polynomial time algorithm for
delta-matroid intersection on delta-matroids without equality using an
oracle. We note that when equality is present, delta-matroid intersection
more >>>

We introduce a new graph parameter called linear upper maximum induced
matching width \textsc{lu-mim width}, denoted for a graph $G$ by $lu(G)$.
We prove that the smallest size of the \textsc{obdd} for $\varphi$,
the monotone 2-\textsc{cnf} corresponding to $G$, is sandwiched
between $2^{lu(G)}$ and $n^{O(lu(G))}$.
The upper bound ... more >>>

We present a new framework for the study of search problems and their
definability in bounded arithmetic. We identify two notions of
complexity of search problems: verification complexity and
computational complexity. Notions of exact solvability and exact
reducibility are developed, and exact $\Sigma^b_i$-definability of
search problems in bounded arithmetic ... more >>>

A Boolean constraint satisfaction problem (CSP), Max-CSP$(f)$, is a maximization problem specified by a constraint $f:\{-1,1\}^k\to\{0,1\}$. An instance of the problem consists of $m$ constraint applications on $n$ Boolean variables, where each constraint application applies the constraint to $k$ literals chosen from the $n$ variables and their negations. The goal ... more >>>

We give a deterministic algorithm for testing satisfiability of formulas in conjunctive normal form with no restriction on clause length. Its upper bound on the worst-case running time matches the best known upper bound for randomized satisfiability-testing algorithms [Dantsin and Wolpert, SAT 2005]. In comparison with the randomized algorithm in ... more >>>

Motivated by its relation to the length of cutting plane proofs for the Maximum Biclique problem, here we consider the following communication game on a given graph G, known to both players. Let K be the maximal number of vertices in a complete bipartite subgraph of G (which is not ... more >>>

While closed timelike curves (CTCs) are not known to exist, studying their consequences has led to nontrivial insights in general relativity, quantum information, and other areas. In this paper we show that if CTCs existed, then quantum computers would be no more powerful than classical computers: both would have the ... more >>>

In this note, we give a short, simple and almost completely self contained proof of a classical result of Kaltofen [Kal86, Kal87, Kal89] which shows that if an n variate degree $d$ polynomial f can be computed by an arithmetic circuit of size s, then each of its factors can ... more >>>

We classify the univariate functions that are relativizable
closure properties of GapP, solving a problem posed by Hertrampf,
Vollmer, and Wagner (Structures '95). We also give a simple proof of
their classification of univariate functions that are relativizable
closure properties of #P.

Quantified constraint satisfaction is the generalization of
constraint satisfaction that allows for both universal and existential
quantifiers over constrained variables, instead
of just existential quantifiers.
We study quantified constraint satisfaction problems ${\rm CSP}(Q,S)$, where $Q$ denotes
a pattern of quantifier alternation ending in exists or the set of all possible
more >>>

We address the problem of partitioning a set of $n$ points into
clusters, so as to minimize the sum, over all intracluster pairs of
points, of the cost associated with each pair. We obtain a randomized
approximation algorithm for this problem, for the cost functions
$\ell_2^2,\ell_1$ and $\ell_2$, as ... more >>>

We consider the following clustering with outliers problem: Given a set of points $X \subset \{-1,1\}^n$, such that there is some point $z \in \{-1,1\}^n$ for which at least $\delta$ of the points are $\epsilon$-correlated with $z$, find $z$. We call such a point $z$ a $(\delta,\epsilon)$-center of X.

In ... more >>>

We introduce the problem of finding a satisfying assignment to a CNF formula that must further belong to a prescribed input subspace. Equivalent formulations of the problem include finding a point outside a union of subspaces (the Union-of-Subspace Avoidance (USA) problem), and finding a common zero of a system of ... more >>>

We show that the multi-commodity max-flow/min-cut gap for series-parallel graphs can be as bad as 2, matching a recent upper bound by Chakrabarti.et.al for this class, and resolving one side of a conjecture of Gupta, Newman, Rabinovich, and Sinclair.

This also improves the largest known gap for planar graphs ... more >>>

We give new bounds on the cosystolic expansion constants of several families of high dimensional expanders, and the known coboundary expansion constants of order complexes of homogeneous geometric lattices, including the spherical building of $SL_n(F_q)$. The improvement applies to the high dimensional expanders constructed by Lubotzky, Samuels and Vishne, and ... more >>>

In this paper, we consider coding schemes for computationally bounded channels, which can introduce an arbitrary set of errors as long as (a) the fraction of errors is bounded with high probability by a parameter p and (b) the process which adds the errors can be described by a sufficiently ... more >>>

The prototypical construction of error correcting codes is based on linear codes over finite fields. In this work, we make first steps in the study of codes defined over integers. We focus on Maximum Distance Separable (MDS) codes, and show that MDS codes with linear rate and distance can be ... more >>>

Understanding the power and limitations of classical and quantum information, and how they differ, is an important endeavor. On the classical side, property testing of distributions is a fundamental task: a tester, given samples of a distribution over a typically large domain such as $\{0,1\}^n$, is asked to verify properties ... more >>>

We show that the existence of a coin-flipping protocol safe against any non-trivial constant bias (e.g., $.499$) implies the existence of one-way functions. This improves upon a recent result of Haitner and Omri [FOCS '11], who proved this implication for protocols with bias $\frac{\sqrt2 -1}2 - o(1) \approx .207$. Unlike ... more >>>

In this note we compare two measures of the complexity of a class $\mathcal F$ of Boolean functions studied in (unconditional) pseudorandomness: $\mathcal F$'s ability to distinguish between biased and uniform coins (the coin problem), and the norms of the different levels of the Fourier expansion of functions in $\mathcal ... more >>>

Gurus are individuals who claim to possess mental powers of insight and prediction that far surpass those of the average person; they compete over followers, offering them insight in return for continued devotion. Followers wish to harness a (true) Guru’s predictive power but (i) have limited attention span and (ii) ... more >>>

We provide a uniform framework for proving the collapse of the hierarchy, $NC^1(\mathcal{C})$
for an exact arithmetic class $\mathcal{C}$ of polynomial degree. These hierarchies collapses all the way down to the third level of the ${AC}^0$-hierarchy, ${AC^0_3}(\mathcal{C})$. Our main collapsing exhibits are the classes \[\mathcal{C} \in \{{C}_={NC^1}, {C}_={L}, {C}_={SAC^1}, {C}_={P}\}.\]
more >>>

We study the fundamental problems of (i) uniformity testing of a discrete distribution,
and (ii) closeness testing between two discrete distributions with bounded $\ell_2$-norm.
These problems have been extensively studied in distribution testing
and sample-optimal estimators are known for them~\cite{Paninski:08, CDVV14, VV14, DKN:15}.

In this work, we show ... more >>>

Recently Ajtai described a construction of one-way functions whose
security is equivalent to the difficulty of some well known approximation
problems in lattices. We show that essentially the same
construction can also be used to obtain collision-free hashing.

Collision-resistant hash functions (CRH) are a fundamental and ubiquitous cryptographic primitive. Several recent works have studied a relaxation of CRH called t-way multi-collision-resistant hash functions (t-MCRH). These are families of functions for which it is computationally hard to find a t-way collision, even though such collisions are abundant (and even ... more >>>

We describe a novel randomized method, the method of
{\em color-coding\/} for finding simple paths and cycles of a specified
length $k$, and other small subgraphs, within a given graph $G=(V,E)$.
The randomized algorithms obtained using this method can be
derandomized using families of {\em perfect hash functions\/}. ... more >>>

We describe a fixed parameter tractable (fpt) algorithm for Colored Hypergraph Isomorphism} which has running time $b!2^{O(b)}N^{O(1)}$, where the parameter $b$ is the maximum size of the color classes of the given hypergraphs and $N$ is the input size. We also describe fpt algorithms for certain permutation group problems that ... more >>>

Recent work has shown that many of the standard TFNP classes — such as PLS, PPADS, PPAD, SOPL, and EOPL — have corresponding proof systems in propositional proof complexity, in the sense that a total search problem is in the class if and only if the totality of the problem ... more >>>

Let $p(x_1,...,x_n) =\sum_{ (r_1,...,r_n) \in I_{n,n} } a_{(r_1,...,r_n) } \prod_{1 \leq i \leq n} x_{i}^{r_{i}}$
be homogeneous polynomial of degree $n$ in $n$ real variables with integer nonnegative coefficients.
The support of such polynomial $p(x_1,...,x_n)$
is defined as $supp(p) = \{(r_1,...,r_n) \in I_{n,n} : a_{(r_1,...,r_n)} \neq 0 ... more >>>

An error correcting code is said to be locally testable if there is a test that checks whether a given string is a codeword, or rather far from the code, by reading only a constant number of symbols of the string. Locally Testable Codes (LTCs) were first systematically studied by ... more >>>

The {\sc $c$-Balanced Separator} problem is a graph-partitioning problem in which given a graph $G$, one aims to find a cut of minimum size such that both the sides of the cut have at least $cn$ vertices. In this paper, we present new directions of progress in the {\sc $c$-Balanced ... more >>>

The very first Kolmogorov's paper on algorithmic
information theory was entitled `Three approaches to the
definition of the quantity of information'. These three
approaches were called combinatorial, probabilistic and
algorithmic. Trying to establish formal connections
between combinatorial and algorithmic approaches, we
prove that any ... more >>>

We prove the following results concerning the combinatorics of list decoding, motivated by the exponential gap between the known upper bound (of $O(1/\gamma)$) and lower bound (of $\Omega_p(\log (1/\gamma))$) for the list-size needed to decode up to radius $p$ with rate $\gamma$ away from capacity, i.e., $1-h(p)-\gamma$ (here $p\in (0,1/2)$ ... more >>>

An elegant characterization of the complexity of constraint satisfaction problems has emerged in the form of the the algebraic dichotomy conjecture of [BKJ00]. Roughly speaking, the characterization asserts that a CSP $\Lambda$ is tractable if and only if there exist certain non-trivial operations known as polymorphisms to combine solutions to ... more >>>

The PCP theorem asserts the existence of proofs that can be verified by a verifier that reads only a very small part of the proof. The theorem was originally proved by Arora and Safra (J. ACM 45(1)) and Arora et al. (J. ACM 45(3)) using sophisticated algebraic tools. More than ... more >>>

The PCP theorem (Arora et. al., J. ACM 45(1,3)) asserts the existence of proofs that can be verified by reading a very small part of the proof. Since the discovery of the theorem, there has been a considerable work on improving the theorem in terms of the length of the ... more >>>

We consider the question of determining whether
a given object has a predetermined property or is ``far'' from any
object having the property.
Specifically, objects are modeled by functions,
and distance between functions is measured as the fraction
of the domain on which the functions differ.
We ... more >>>

We consider a general model of monotone circuits, which
we call d-local. In these circuits we allow as gates:
(i) arbitrary monotone Boolean functions whose minterms or
maxterms (or both) have length at most <i>d</i>, and
(ii) arbitrary real-valued non-decreasing functions on ... more >>>

Promise CSPs are a relaxation of constraint satisfaction problems where the goal is to find an assignment satisfying a relaxed version of the constraints. Several well known problems can be cast as promise CSPs including approximate graph and hypergraph coloring, discrepancy minimization, and interesting variants of satisfiability. Similar to CSPs, ... more >>>

We discovered a serious error in one of our previous submissions to ECCC and wish to make sure that this mistake is publicly known.

The main argument of the report TR06-133 is in error. The paper claims to prove the result of the title by reduction from the (Exists,k)-pebble game, ... more >>>

What does it mean to commit to a quantum state? In this work, we propose a simple answer: a commitment to quantum messages is binding if, after the commit phase, the committed state is hidden from the sender's view. We accompany this new definition with several instantiations. We build the ... more >>>

We provide a new framework for establishing strong lower bounds on the nonnega- tive rank of matrices by means of common information, a notion previously introduced in Wyner [1975]. Common information is a natural lower bound for the nonnegative rank of a matrix and by combining it with Hellinger distance ... more >>>

This document collects the lecture notes from my course ``Communication Complexity (for Algorithm Designers),'' taught at
Stanford in the winter quarter of 2015. The two primary goals of the course are:

1. Learn several canonical problems that have proved the most useful for proving lower bounds (Disjointness, Index, Gap-Hamming, etc.). ... more >>>

A secure function evaluation protocol allows two parties to jointly compute a function $f(x,y)$ of their inputs in a manner not leaking more information than necessary. A major result in this field is: ``any function $f$ that can be computed using polynomial resources can be computed securely using polynomial resources'' ... more >>>

The Collision problem is to decide whether a given list of numbers $(x_1,\ldots,x_n)\in[n]^n$ is $1$-to-$1$ or $2$-to-$1$ when promised one of them is the case. We show an $n^{\Omega(1)}$ randomised communication lower bound for the natural two-party version of Collision where Alice holds the first half of the bits of ... more >>>

We show a communication complexity lower bound for finding a correlated equilibrium of a two-player game. More precisely, we define a two-player $N \times N$ game called the 2-cycle game and show that the randomized communication complexity of finding a 1/poly($N$)-approximate correlated equilibrium of the 2-cycle game is $\Omega(N)$. For ... more >>>

We study the randomized communication complexity of the following problem. Alice receives the integer coordinates of a point in the plane, and Bob receives the integer parameters of a half-plane, and their goal is to determine whether Alice's point belongs to Bob's half-plane.

This communication task corresponds to determining ... more >>>

Motivated by the quest for a broader understanding of communication complexity of simple functions, we introduce the class of ''permutation-invariant'' functions. A partial function $f:\{0,1\}^n \times \{0,1\}^n\to \{0,1,?\}$ is permutation-invariant if for every bijection $\pi:\{1,\ldots,n\} \to \{1,\ldots,n\}$ and every $\mathbf{x}, \mathbf{y} \in \{0,1\}^n$, it is the case that $f(\mathbf{x}, \mathbf{y}) ... more >>>

We study set-disjointness in a generalized model of randomized two-party communication where the probability of acceptance must be at least alpha(n) on yes-inputs and at most beta(n) on no-inputs, for some functions alpha(n)>beta(n). Our main result is a complete characterization of the private-coin communication complexity of set-disjointness for all functions ... more >>>

Set-disjointness is one of the most fundamental and widely studied problems in the area of communication complexity. In this problem, each party $i$ receives a set $S_i\subseteq [N]$. The goal is to determine whether $\bigcap S_i$ is empty via communication between players. The decision version simply asks if the common ... more >>>

We prove nearly matching upper and lower bounds on the randomized communication complexity of the following problem: Alice and Bob are each given a probability distribution over $n$ elements, and they wish to estimate within $\pm\epsilon$ the statistical (total variation) distance between their distributions. For some range of parameters, there ... more >>>

We solve an open problem of Kushilevitz and Nisan
(1997) in communication complexity. Let $R_{eps}(f)$
and $D^{mu}_{eps}(f)$ denote the randomized and
$mu$-distributional communication complexities of
f, respectively ($eps$ a small constant). Yao's
well-known Minimax Principle states that
R_{eps}(f) = max_{mu} { D^{mu}_{eps}(f) }.
Kushilevitz and Nisan (1997) ask whether ... more >>>

In this note, we study the interplay between the communication from a verifier in a general private-coin interactive protocol and the number of random bits it uses in the protocol. Under worst-case derandomization assumptions, we show that it is possible to transform any $I$-round interactive protocol that uses $\rho$ random ... more >>>

Starting with the two standard model of randomized communication complexity, we study the communication complexity of functions when the protocol has access to a defective source of randomness.
Specifically, we consider both the public-randomness and private-randomness cases, while replacing the commonly postulated perfect randomness with distributions over $\ell$ bit ... more >>>

We study problems in randomized communication complexity when the protocol is only required to attain some small advantage over purely random guessing, i.e., it produces the correct output with probability at least $\epsilon$ greater than one over the codomain size of the function. Previously, Braverman and Moitra (STOC 2013) showed ... more >>>

We prove that any total boolean function of rank $r$ can be computed by a deterministic communication protocol of complexity $O(\sqrt{r} \cdot \log(r))$. Equivalently, any graph whose adjacency matrix has rank $r$ has chromatic number at most $2^{O(\sqrt{r} \cdot \log(r))}$. This gives a nearly quadratic improvement in the dependence on ... more >>>

Collision problems are important problems in complexity theory and cryptography with diverse applications. Previous fruitful works have mainly focused on query models. Driven by various applications, several works by Bauer, Farshim and Mazaheri (CRYPTO 2018), Itsykson and Riazanov (CCC 2021), Göös and Jain (RANDOM 2022) independently proposed the communication version ... more >>>

Constructing key-agreement protocols in the random oracle model (ROM) is a viable method to assess the feasibility of developing public-key cryptography within Minicrypt. Unfortunately, as shown by Impagliazzo and Rudich (STOC 1989) and Barak and Mahmoody (Crypto 2009), such protocols can only guarantee limited security: any $\ell$-query protocol can be ... more >>>

We prove that the set disjointness problem has randomized communication complexity
$\Omega(\sqrt{n}/2^{k}k)$ in the number-on-the-forehead model with $k$ parties, a quadratic improvement
on the previous bound $\Omega(\sqrt{n}/2^{k})^{1/2}$. Our result remains valid for quantum
protocols, where it is essentially tight. Proving it was an open problem since 1997, ... more >>>

Representations of Boolean functions by real polynomials
play an important role in complexity theory. Typically,
one is interested in the least degree of a polynomial
p(x_1,...,x_n) that approximates or sign-represents
a given Boolean function f(x_1,...,x_n). This article
surveys a new and growing body of work in communication
complexity that centers ... more >>>

We introduce a simple model illustrating the role of context in communication and the challenge posed by uncertainty of knowledge of context. We consider a variant of distributional communication complexity where Alice gets some information $x$ and Bob gets $y$, where $(x,y)$ is drawn from a known distribution, and Bob ... more >>>

The communication complexity of many fundamental problems reduces greatly
when the communicating parties share randomness that is independent of the
inputs to the communication task. Natural communication processes (say between
humans) however often involve large amounts of shared correlations among the
communicating players, but rarely allow for perfect sharing of ... more >>>

We study the role of interaction in the Common Randomness Generation (CRG) and Secret Key Generation (SKG) problems. In the CRG problem, two players, Alice and Bob, respectively get samples $X_1,X_2,\dots$ and $Y_1,Y_2,\dots$ with the pairs $(X_1,Y_1)$, $(X_2, Y_2)$, $\dots$ being drawn independently from some known probability distribution $\mu$. They ... more >>>

Commuting local Hamiltonians provide a testing ground for studying many of the most interesting open questions in quantum information theory, including the quantum PCP conjecture and the existence of area laws. Although they are a simplified model of quantum computation, the status of the commuting local Hamiltonian problem remains largely ... more >>>

Comparator circuit model was originally introduced by Mayr and Subramanian (1992) to capture problems which are not known to be P-complete but still not known to admit efficient parallel algorithms. The class CC is the complexity class of problems many-one logspace reducible to the Comparator Circuit Value Problem We know ... more >>>

Computational pseudorandomness studies the extent to which a random variable $\bf{Z}$ looks like the uniform distribution according to a class of tests $\cal{F}$. Computational entropy generalizes computational pseudorandomness by studying the extent which a random variable looks like a \emph{high entropy} distribution. There are different formal definitions of computational entropy ... more >>>

We consider the following (promise) problem, denoted ED (for Entropy
Difference): The input is a pairs of circuits, and YES instances (resp.,
NO instances) are such pairs in which the first (resp., second) circuit
generates a distribution with noticeably higher entropy.

On one hand we show that any language ... more >>>

Under the assumption that NP does not have p-measure 0, we
investigate reductions to NP-complete sets and prove the following:

- Adaptive reductions are more powerful than nonadaptive
reductions: there is a problem that is Turing-complete for NP but
not truth-table-complete.

- Strong nondeterministic reductions are more powerful ... more >>>

We present a list of parameterized problems together with a complexity classification of whether they allow a fixed-parameter tractable reduction to SAT or not. These parameterized problems are based on problems whose complexity lies at the second level of the Polynomial Hierarchy or higher. The list will be updated as ... more >>>

Let $C$ be a (fan-in $2$) Boolean circuit of size $s$ and depth $d$, and let $x$ be an input for $C$. Assume that a verifier that knows $C$ but doesn't know $x$ can access the low degree extension of $x$ at one random point. Two competing provers try to ... more >>>

Let $\mathcal{F}$ be a finite alphabet and $\mathcal{D}$ be a finite set of distributions over $\mathcal{F}$. A Generalized Santha-Vazirani (GSV) source of type $(\mathcal{F}, \mathcal{D})$, introduced by Beigi, Etesami and Gohari (ICALP 2015, SICOMP 2017), is a random sequence $(F_1, \dots, F_n)$ in $\mathcal{F}^n$, where $F_i$ is a sample from ... more >>>

In this paper we study the identity testing problem of \emph{arithmetic read-once formulas} (ROF) and some related models. A read-once formula is formula (a circuit whose underlying graph is a tree) in which the
operations are $\set{+,\times}$ and such that every input variable labels at most one leaf. We obtain ... more >>>

This paper surveys some of the work that was inspired by Wagner's general technique to prove completeness in the levels of the boolean hierarchy over NP and some related results. In particular, we show that it is DP-complete to decide whether or not a given graph can be colored with ... more >>>

A Secure Function Evaluation (SFE) of a two-variable function f(.,.) is a protocol that allows two parties with inputs x and y to evaluate
f(x,y) in a manner where neither party learns ``more than is necessary". A rich body of work deals with the study of completeness for secure ... more >>>

For any Boolean function $f$ let $L(f)$ be its formula size
complexity in the basis $\{\land,\oplus,1\}$. For every $n$ and
every $k\le n/2$, we describe a probabilistic distribution
on formulas in the basis $\{\land,\oplus,1\}$ in some given set of
$n$ variables and of the ... more >>>

We classify two-qubit commuting Hamiltonians in terms of their computational complexity. Suppose one has a two-qubit commuting Hamiltonian $H$ which one can apply to any pair of qubits, starting in a computational basis state. We prove a dichotomy theorem: either this model is efficiently classically simulable or it allows one ... more >>>

In order to study the complexity of counting problems, several interesting frameworks have been proposed, such as Constraint Satisfaction Problems (#CSP) and Graph Homomorphisms. Recently, we proposed and explored a novel alternative framework, called Holant Problems. It is a refinement with a more explicit role for constraint functions. Both graph ... more >>>

This is a research-expository paper. It deals with
complexity issues in the theory of linear block codes. The main
emphasis is on the theoretical performance limits of the
best known codes. Therefore, the main subject of the paper are
families of asymptotically good codes, i.e., codes whose rate and
relative ... more >>>

In this paper we present a combinatorial approach for proving complexity lower bounds. We mainly focus on the following instantiation of it. Consider a pair of properties of $m$-edge regular hypergraphs. Suppose they are ``indistinguishable'' with respect to hypergraphs with $m-t$ edges, in the sense that every such hypergraph has ... more >>>

We study two natural extensions of Constraint Satisfaction Problems (CSPs). {\em Balance}-Max-CSP requires that in any feasible assignment each element in the domain is used an equal number of times. An instance of {\em Hard}-Max-CSP consists of {\em soft constraints} and {\em hard constraints}, and the goal is to maximize ... more >>>

We study the computational complexity of constraint satisfaction problems that are based on integer expressions and algebraic circuits. On input of a finite set of variables and a finite set of constraints the question is whether the variables can be mapped onto finite subsets of natural numbers (resp., finite intervals ... more >>>

Following the approach of Hemaspaandra and Vollmer, we can define
counting complexity classes #.C for any complexity class C of decision
problems. In particular, the classes #.Pi_{k}P with k >= 1
corresponding to all levels of the polynomial hierarchy have thus been
studied. However, for a large variety of counting ... more >>>

We address a natural question in average-case complexity: does there exist a language $L$ such that for all easy distributions $D$ the distributional problem $(L, D)$ is easy on the average while there exists some more hard distribution $D'$ such that $(L, D')$ is hard on the average? We consider ... more >>>

We present an algorithm to invert the Euler function $\varphi(m)$. The algorithm, for a given integer $n\ge 1$, in polynomial time ``on average'', finds theset $\Psi(n)$ of all solutions $m$ to the equation $\varphi(m) =n$. In fact, in the worst case the set $\Psi(n)$ is exponentially large and cannot be ... more >>>

Let $A \in \{0,1\}^{n \times n}$ be a matrix with $z$ zeroes and $u$ ones and $x$ be an $n$-dimensional vector of formal variables over a semigroup $(S, \circ)$. How many semigroup operations are required to compute the linear operator $Ax$?

As we observe in this paper, this problem contains ... more >>>

We give complexity bounds for various classes of functions computed by cost register automata.

It is a known approach to translate propositional formulas into
systems of polynomial inequalities and to consider proof systems
for the latter ones. The well-studied proof systems of this kind
are the Cutting Planes proof system (CP) utilizing linear
inequalities and the Lovasz-Schrijver calculi (LS) utilizing
quadratic ... more >>>

We prove that the exact versions of the domatic number problem are complete
for the levels of the boolean hierarchy over NP. The domatic number
problem, which arises in the area of computer networks, is the problem of
partitioning a given graph into a maximum number ... more >>>

The classic TQBF problem is to determine who has a winning strategy in a game played on a given CNF formula, where the two players alternate turns picking truth values for the variables in a given order, and the winner is determined by whether the CNF gets satisfied. We study ... more >>>

We introduce a population genetics model in which the operators
are effectively computable -- computable in polynomial time on
Probabilistic Turing Machines. We shall show that in this model
a population can encode easily large amount of information
from enviroment into genetic code. Then it can process the
information as ... more >>>

This document collects the lecture notes from my mini-course "Complexity Theory, Game Theory, and Economics," taught at the Bellairs Research Institute of McGill University, Holetown, Barbados, February 19-23, 2017, as the 29th McGill Invitational Workshop on Computational Complexity.

The goal of this mini-course is twofold: (i) to explain how complexity ... more >>>

In the near future, there will likely be special-purpose quantum computers with 40-50 high-quality qubits. This paper lays general theoretical foundations for how to use such devices to demonstrate "quantum supremacy": that is, a clear quantum speedup for some task, motivated by the goal of overturning the Extended Church-Turing Thesis ... more >>>

We prove a randomized communication-complexity lower bound for a composed OrderedSearch $\circ$ IP — by lifting the randomized query-complexity lower-bound of OrderedSearch to the communication-complexity setting. We do this by extending ideas from a paper of Raz and Wigderson. We think that the techniques we develop will be useful in ... more >>>

The main result of this paper is a simple, yet generic, composition theorem for low error two-query probabilistically checkable proofs (PCPs). Prior to this work, composition of PCPs was well-understood only in the constant error regime. Existing composition methods in the low error regime were non-modular (i.e., very much tailored ... more >>>

In this paper we obtain a composition theorem that allows us to construct locally testable codes (LTCs) by repeated two-wise tensor products. This is the First composition theorem showing that repeating the two-wise tensor operation any constant number of times still results in a locally testable code, improving upon previous ... more >>>

A source is compressible if we can efficiently compute short
descriptions of strings in the support and efficiently
recover the strings from the descriptions. In this paper, we
present a technique for proving lower bounds on
compressibility in an oracle setting, which yields the
following results:

- We ... more >>>

We show how to compress communication in distributed protocols in which parties do not have private inputs. More specifically, we present a generic method for converting any protocol in which parties do not have private inputs, into another protocol where each message is "short" while preserving the same number of ... more >>>

We study the problem of compressing interactive communication to its
information content $I$, defined as the amount of information that the
participants learn about each other's inputs. We focus on the case when
the participants' inputs are distributed independently and show how to
compress the communication to $O(I\log^{2}I)$ bits, with ... more >>>

We consider the problem of compression for ``easy'' Boolean functions: given the truth table of an $n$-variate Boolean function $f$ computable by some \emph{unknown small circuit} from a \emph{known class} of circuits, find in deterministic time $\poly(2^n)$ a circuit $C$ (no restriction on the type of $C$) computing $f$ so ... more >>>

We study the compression of polynomially samplable sources. In particular, we give efficient prefix-free compression and decompression algorithms for three classes of such sources (whose support is a subset of {0,1}^n).

1. We show how to compress sources X samplable by logspace machines to expected length H(X)+O(1).

Our next ... more >>>

This paper explores the impact of geometry on computability =
and complexity in
Winfree's model of nanoscale self-assembly. We work in the =
two-dimensional
tile assembly model, i.e., in the discrete Euclidean plane Z x Z. Our =
first
main theorem says that there is a roughly quadratic function f ... more >>>

We ask, and answer, the question of what's computable by Turing machines equipped with time travel into the past: that is, closed timelike curves or CTCs (with no bound on their size). We focus on a model for CTCs due to Deutsch, which imposes a probabilistic consistency condition to avoid ... more >>>

The Lov\'asz theta function $\theta(G)$ of a graph $G$ has attracted a lot of attention for its connection with diverse issues, such as communicating without errors and computing large cliques in graphs. Indeed this function enjoys the remarkable property of being computable in polynomial time, despite being sandwitched between clique ... more >>>

We study the $n$-party noisy broadcast channel with a constant fraction of malicious parties. Specifically, we assume that each non-malicious party holds an input bit, and communicates with the others in order to learn the input bits of all non-malicious parties. In each communication round, one of the parties broadcasts ... more >>>

The partial string avoidability problem is stated as follows: given a finite set of strings with possible ``holes'' (wildcard symbols), determine whether there exists a two-sided infinite string containing no substrings from this set, assuming that a hole matches every symbol. The problem is known to be NP-hard and in ... more >>>

It had previously been shown that generic cortical microcircuit
models can perform complex real-time computations on continuous
input streams, provided that these computations can be carried out
with a rapidly fading memory. We investigate in this article the
computational capability of such circuits in the ... more >>>

Valiant (2007) proposed a computational model for evolution and suggested that evolvability be studied in the framework of computational learning theory. Feldman (2008) showed that Valiant’s evolution model is equivalent to the correlational statistical query (CSQ) learning model, which is a restricted setting of the statistical query (SQ) model. Evolvability ... more >>>

We study the computational complexity of languages which have
interactive proofs of logarithmic knowledge complexity. We show that
all such languages can be recognized in ${\cal BPP}^{\cal NP}$. Prior
to this work, for languages with greater-than-zero knowledge
complexity (and specifically, even for knowledge complexity 1) only
trivial computational complexity bounds ... more >>>

We study the computational complexity of counting the fixed point configurations (FPs), the predecessor configurations and the ancestor configurations in certain classes of graph or network automata viewed as discrete dynamical systems. Early results of this investigation are presented in two recent ECCC reports [39, 40]. In particular, it is ... more >>>

We prove results on the computational complexity of instances of 3SAT in which every variable occurs 3 or 4 times.

We introduce a new Turing machine based concept of time complexity for functions on computable metric spaces. It generalizes the ordinary complexity of word functions and the complexity of real functions studied by Ko \cite{Ko91} et al. Although this definition of ${\rm TIME}$ as the maximum of a generally infinite ... more >>>

We survey research that studies the connection between the computational complexity
of optimization problems on the one hand, and the duality gap between the primal and
dual optimization problems on the other. To our knowledge, this is the first survey that
connects the two very important areas. We further look ... more >>>

We present a simple proof to the existence of a probability ensemble
with tiny support which cannot be distinguished from the uniform ensemble
by any recursive computation.
Since the support is tiny (i.e, sub-polynomial),
this ensemble can be distinguish from the uniform ensemble
by a (non-uniform) family ... more >>>

We consider the existence of pairs of probability ensembles which
may be efficiently distinguished given $k$ samples
but cannot be efficiently distinguished given $k'<k$ samples.
It is well known that in any such pair of ensembles it cannot be that
both are efficiently computable
(and that such phenomena ... more >>>

In a variety of PAC learning models, a tradeoff between time and
information seems to exist: with unlimited time, a small amount of
information suffices, but with time restrictions, more information
sometimes seems to be required.
In addition, it has long been known that there are
concept classes ... more >>>

Let $\pi$ be an efficient two-party protocol that given security parameter $\kappa$, both parties output single bits $X_\kappa$ and $Y_\kappa$, respectively. We are interested in how $(X_\kappa,Y_\kappa)$ ``appears'' to an efficient adversary that only views the transcript $T_\kappa$. We make the following contributions:

\begin{itemize}
\item We develop new tools to ... more >>>

There has been tremendous progress in the past decade in the field of quantified Boolean formulas (QBF), both in practical solving as well as in creating a theory of corresponding proof systems and their proof complexity analysis. Both for solving and for proof complexity, it is important to have interesting ... more >>>

In Arithmetic Circuit Complexity the standard operations are $\{+,\times\}$.
Yet, in some scenarios exponentiation gates are considered as well (see e.g. \cite{BshoutyBshouty98,ASSS12,Kayal12,KSS14}).
In this paper we study the question of efficiently evaluating a polynomial given an oracle access to its power.
That is, beyond an exponentiation gate. As ... more >>>

In this paper we propose a methodology for determining approximate Nash equilibria of non-cooperative bimatrix games and, based on that, we provide a polynomial time algorithm that computes $\frac{1}{3} + \frac{1}{p(n)} $ -approximate equilibria, where $p(n)$ is a polynomial controlled by our algorithm and proportional to its running time. The ... more >>>

We give an algorithm for finding an $\epsilon$-fixed point of a contraction map $f:[0,1]^k\rightarrow [0,1]^k$ under the $\ell_\infty$-norm with query complexity $O (k^2\log (1/\epsilon ) )$.

We present a logspace algorithm to compute path decompositions of bounded pathwidth graphs, thus settling its complexity. Prior to our work, the best known upper bound to compute such decompositions was linear time. We also show that deciding if the pathwidth of a graph is at most a given constant ... more >>>

Elementary symmetric polynomials $S_n^k$ are used as a
benchmark for the bounded-depth arithmetic circuit model of computation.
In this work we prove that $S_n^k$ modulo composite numbers $m=p_1p_2$
can be computed with much fewer multiplications than over any field, if
the coefficients of monomials $x_{i_1}x_{i_2}\cdots x_{i_k}$ ... more >>>

Computational complexity is the subfield of computer science that rigorously studies the intrinsic difficulty of computational problems. This survey explains how complexity theory defines “hard problems”; applies these concepts to several equilibrium computation problems; and discusses implications for computation, games, and behavior. We assume minimal prior background in computer science.

Igusa's local zeta function $Z_{f,p}(s)$ is the generating function that counts the number of integral roots, $N_{k}(f)$, of $f(\mathbf x) \bmod p^k$, for all $k$. It is a famous result, in analytic number theory, that $Z_{f,p}$ is a rational function in $\mathbb{Q}(p^s)$. We give an elementary proof of this fact ... more >>>

We study the following computational problem: for which values of $k$, the majority of $n$ bits $\text{MAJ}_n$ can be computed with a depth two formula whose each gate computes a majority function of at most $k$ bits? The corresponding computational model is denoted by $\text{MAJ}_k \circ \text{MAJ}_k$. We observe that ... more >>>

By proving that the problem of computing a $1/n^{\Theta(1)}$-approximate Nash equilibrium remains \textbf{PPAD}-complete, we show that the BIMATRIX game is not likely to have a fully polynomial-time approximation scheme. In other words, no algorithm with time polynomial in $n$ and $1/\epsilon$ can compute an $\epsilon$-approximate Nash equilibrium of an $n\times ... more >>>

This survey, aimed mainly at mathematicians rather than practitioners, covers recent developments in homomorphic encryption (computing on encrypted data) and program obfuscation (generating encrypted but functional programs). Current schemes for encrypted computation all use essentially the same "noisy" approach: they encrypt via a noisy encoding of the message, they decrypt ... more >>>

A folklore result in arithmetic complexity shows that the number of multiplications required to compute some $n$-variate polynomial of degree $d$ is $\sqrt{{n+d \choose n}}$. We complement this by an almost matching upper bound, showing that any $n$-variate polynomial of degree $d$ over any field can be computed with only ... more >>>

A de Morgan formula over Boolean variables $x_1, \ldots, x_n$ is a binary tree whose internal nodes are marked with AND or OR gates and whose leaves are marked with variables or their negation. We define the size of the formula as the number of leaves in it. Proving that ... more >>>

Is there an NP function that, when given a satisfiable formula
as input, outputs one satisfying assignment uniquely? That is, can a
nondeterministic function cull just one satisfying assignment from a
possibly exponentially large collection of assignments? We show that if
there is such a nondeterministic function, then the polynomial ... more >>>

Computing the maximum bichromatic discrepancy is an interesting
theoretical problem with important applications in computational
learning theory, computational geometry and computer graphics.
In this paper we give algorithms to compute the maximum
bichromatic discrepancy for simple geometric ranges, including
rectangles and halfspaces.
In addition, we give ... more >>>

We study computation by formulas over $(min, +)$. We consider the computation of $\max\{x_1,\ldots,x_n\}$
over $\mathbb{N}$ as a difference of $(\min, +)$ formulas, and show that size $n + n \log n$ is sufficient and necessary. Our proof also shows that any $(\min, +)$ formula computing the minimum of all ... more >>>

We define the notion of a catalytic-space computation. This is a computation that has a small amount of clean space available and is equipped with additional auxiliary space, with the caveat that the additional space is initially in an arbitrary, possibly incompressible, state and must be returned to this state ... more >>>

We prove that binary linear concatenated codes with an outer algebraic code (specifically, a folded Reed-Solomon code) and independently and randomly chosen linear inner codes achieve the list-decoding capacity with high probability. In particular, for any $0 < \rho < 1/2$ and $\epsilon > 0$, there exist concatenated codes of ... more >>>

Knowledge extraction is a fundamental notion, modeling knowledge possession in a computational complexity sense. The notion provides a tool for cryptographic protocol design and analysis, enabling one to argue about the internal state of protocol players. We define and
investigate the relative power of the notion of ``concurrent knowledge-extraction'' ... more >>>

One of the central questions in Cryptography today is proving security of the protocols ``on the Internet'', i.e., in a concurrent setting where there are multiple interactions between players, and where the adversary can play so called ``man-in-the-middle'' attacks, forwarding and modifying messages between two or more unsuspecting players. Indeed, ... more >>>

We provide <i>unconditional</i> constructions of <i>concurrent</i>
statistical zero-knowledge proofs for a variety of non-trivial
problems (not known to have probabilistic polynomial-time
algorithms). The problems include Graph Isomorphism, Graph
Nonisomorphism, Quadratic Residuosity, Quadratic Nonresiduosity, a
restricted version of Statistical Difference, and approximate
versions of the (<b>coNP</b> forms of the) Shortest Vector ... more >>>

Following Dwork, Naor, and Sahai (30th STOC, 1998),
we consider concurrent execution of protocols in a
semi-synchronized network. Specifically, we assume that each party
holds a local clock such that a constant bound on the relative rates
of these clocks is a-priori known, and consider protocols that
employ ... more >>>

We investigate the task of deterministically condensing randomness from Online Non-Oblivious Symbol Fixing (oNOSF) sources, a natural model of defective random sources for which it is known that extraction is impossible [AORSV, EUROCRYPT'20]. A $(g,\ell)$-oNOSF source is a sequence of $\ell$ blocks $\mathbf{X} = (\mathbf{X}_1, \dots, \mathbf{X}_{\ell})\sim (\{0, 1\}^{n})^{\ell}$, where ... more >>>

Promise Constraint Satisfaction Problems (PCSPs) are a generalization of Constraint Satisfaction Problems (CSPs) where each predicate has a strong and a weak form and given a CSP instance, the objective is to distinguish if the strong form can be satisfied vs. even the weak form cannot be satisfied. Since their ... more >>>

Consider the following secret-sharing problem. Your goal is to distribute a long file $s$ between $n$ servers such that $(d-1)$-subsets cannot recover the file, $(d+1)$-subsets can recover the file, and $d$-subsets should be able to recover $s$ if and only if they appear in some predefined list $L$. How small ... more >>>

In the \emph{conditional disclosure of secrets} problem (Gertner et al., J. Comput. Syst. Sci., 2000) Alice and Bob, who hold inputs $x$ and $y$ respectively, wish to release a common secret $s$ to Carol (who knows both $x$ and $y$) if only if the input $(x,y)$ satisfies some predefined predicate ... more >>>

We study the approximate-coloring(q,Q) problem: Given a graph G, decide
whether \chi(G) \le q or \chi(G)\ge Q. We derive conditional
hardness for this problem for any constant 3\le q < Q. For q \ge
4, our result is based on Khot's 2-to-1 conjecture [Khot'02].
For q=3, we base our hardness ... more >>>

Let $C$ be an error-correcting code over a large alphabet $q$ of block length $n$, and assume that, a possibly corrupted, codeword $c$ is distributively stored among $n$ servers where the $i$th entry is being held by the $i$th server. Suppose that every pair of servers publicly announce whether the ... more >>>

In this paper we demonstrate a close connection between UniqueGames and
MultiCut.
%
In MultiCut, one is given a ``network graph'' and a ``demand
graph'' on the same vertex set and the goal is to remove as few
edges from the network graph as ... more >>>

A central open question within meta-complexity is that of NP-hardness of problems such as MCSP and MK$^t$P. Despite a large body of work giving consequences of and barriers for NP-hardness of these problems under (restricted) deterministic reductions, very little is known in the setting of randomized reductions. In this work, ... more >>>

Proving that there are problems in $P^{NP}$ that require boolean circuits of super-linear size is a major frontier in complexity theory. While such lower bounds are known for larger complexity classes, existing results only show that the corresponding problems are hard on infinitely many input lengths. For instance, proving almost-everywhere ... more >>>

We prove several results giving new and stronger connections between learning theory, circuit complexity and pseudorandomness. Let C be any typical class of Boolean circuits, and C[s(n)] denote n-variable C-circuits of size at most s(n). We show:

Learning Speedups: If C[$n^{O(1)}$] admits a randomized weak learning algorithm under the uniform ... more >>>

Let $X$ be a $d$-dimensional simplicial complex. A function $F\colon X(k)\to \{0,1\}^k$ is said to be a direct product function if there exists a function $f\colon X(1)\to \{0,1\}$ such that $F(\sigma) = (f(\sigma_1), \ldots, f(\sigma_k))$ for each $k$-face $\sigma$. In an effort to simplify components of the PCP theorem, Goldreich ... more >>>

Attempts to prove the intractability of the Minimum Circuit Size Problem (MCSP) date as far back as the 1950s and are well-motivated by connections to cryptography, learning theory, and average-case complexity. In this work, we make progress, on two fronts, towards showing MCSP is intractable under worst-case assumptions.

While ... more >>>

Locally decodable codes (LDC's) are error-correcting codes that allow recovery of individual message indices by accessing only a constant number of codeword indices. For substitution errors, it is evident that LDC's exist -- Hadamard codes are examples of $2$-query LDC's. Research on this front has focused on finding the optimal ... more >>>

The PCP theorem (Arora et. al., J. ACM 45(1,3)) says that every NP-proof can be encoded to another proof, namely, a probabilistically checkable proof (PCP), which can be tested by a verifier that queries only a small part of the PCP. A natural question is how large is the blow-up ... more >>>

We obtain a characterization of ACC0 in terms of a natural class of
constant width circuits, namely in terms of constant width polynomial
size planar circuits. This is shown via a characterization of the
class of acyclic digraphs which can be embedded on a cylinder surface
in such a way ... more >>>

We design polynomial size, constant depth (namely, $AC^0$) arithmetic formulae for the greatest common divisor (GCD) of two polynomials, as well as the related problems of the discriminant, resultant, Bézout coefficients, squarefree decomposition, and the inversion of structured matrices like Sylvester and Bézout matrices. Our GCD algorithm extends to any ... more >>>

We study the complexity of arithmetic in finite fields of characteristic two, $\F_{2^n}$.
We concentrate on the following two problems:

Iterated Multiplication: Given $\alpha_1, \alpha_2,..., \alpha_t \in \F_{2^n}$, compute $\alpha_1 \cdot \alpha_2 \cdots \alpha_t \in \F_{2^n}$.

Exponentiation: Given $\alpha \in \F_{2^n}$ and a $t$-bit integer $k$, compute $\alpha^k \in \F_{2^n}$.

We establish new separations between the power of monotone and general (non-monotone) Boolean circuits:

- For every $k \geq 1$, there is a monotone function in ${\rm AC^0}$ (constant-depth poly-size circuits) that requires monotone circuits of depth $\Omega(\log^k n)$. This significantly extends a classical result of Okol'nishnikova (1982) and Ajtai ... more >>>

In this paper, we address sorting networks that are constructed from comparators of arity $k > 2$. That is, in our setting the arity of the comparators -- or, in other words, the number of inputs that can be sorted at the unit cost -- is a parameter. We study ... more >>>

Research in the 80's and 90's showed how to construct a pseudorandom
generator from a function that is hard to compute on more than $99\%$
of the inputs. A more recent line of works showed however that if
the generator has small error, then the proof of correctness cannot
be ... more >>>

We study coding schemes for multiparty interactive communication over synchronous networks that suffer from stochastic noise, where each bit is independently flipped with probability $\epsilon$. We analyze the minimal overhead that must be added by the coding scheme in order to succeed in performing the computation despite the noise.

Our ... more >>>

Multiparty interactive coding allows a network of $n$ parties to perform distributed computations when the communication channels suffer from noise. Previous results (Rajagopalan and Schulman, STOC '94) obtained a multiparty interactive coding protocol, resilient to random noise, with a blowup of $O(\log(\Delta+1))$ for networks whose topology has a maximal degree ... more >>>

What are the minimal cryptographic assumptions that suffice for constructing efficient argument systems, and for which tasks? Recently, Amit and Rothblum [STOC 2023] showed that one-way functions suffice for constructing constant-round arguments for bounded-depth computations. In this work we ask: what other tasks have efficient argument systems based only on ... more >>>

We study the following question: what cryptographic assumptions are needed for obtaining constant-round computationally-sound argument systems? We focus on argument systems with almost-linear verification time for subclasses of $\mathbf{P}$, such as depth-bounded computations.
Kilian's celebrated work [STOC 1992] provides such 4-message arguments for $\mathbf{P}$ (actually, for $\mathbf{NP}$) using collision-resistant hash ... more >>>

We present constant-round concurrently secure (sound) resettable
zero-knowledge (rZK-CS) arguments in the bare public-key (BPK)
model. Our constructions deal with general NP ZK-arguments as well
as with highly efficient ZK-arguments for number-theoretic
languages, most relevant to identification scenarios. These are the
first constant-round protocols of ... more >>>

We present constant-round interactive proof systems for sufficiently uniform versions of AC0[2] and NC1.
Both proof systems are doubly-efficient, and offer a better trade-off between the round complexity and the total communication than
the work of Reingold, Rothblum, and Rothblum (STOC, 2016).
Our proof system for AC0[2] supports a more ... more >>>

The celebrated IP=PSPACE Theorem [LFKN92,Shamir92] allows an all-powerful but untrusted prover to convince a polynomial-time verifier of the validity of extremely complicated statements (as long as they can be evaluated using polynomial space). The interactive proof system designed for this purpose requires a polynomial number of communication rounds and an ... more >>>

In this note, we show the existence of \emph{constant-round} computational zero-knowledge \emph{proofs of knowledge} for all $\cal NP$. The existence of constant-round zero-knowledge proofs was proven by Goldreich and Kahan (Journal of Cryptology, 1996), and the existence of constant-round zero-knowledge \emph{arguments} of knowledge was proven by Feige and Shamir (CRYPTO ... more >>>

Constraint satisfaction on finite groups, with subgroups and their cosets
described by generators, has a polynomial time algorithm. For any given
group, a single additional constraint type that is not a coset of a near
subgroup makes the problem NP-complete. We consider constraint satisfaction on
groups with subgroups, near subgroups, ... more >>>

We study the approximability of the \maxcsp problem over non-boolean domains, more specifically over $\{0,1,\ldots,q-1\}$ for some integer $q$. We obtain a approximation algorithm that achieves a ratio of $C(q) \cdot k/q^k$ for some constant $C(q)$ depending only on $q$. Further, we extend the techniques of Samorodnitsky and Trevisan to ... more >>>

We consider the next step from boolean conjunctive normal forms to
arbitrary constraint satisfaction problems (with arbitrary constraints), namely "generalised clause-sets" (or "sets of no-goods"), which allow negative literals "v <> e" for variables v and values e --- this level of generality appears to be the right level for ... more >>>

Attempts at classifying computational problems as polynomial time
solvable, NP-complete, or belonging to a higher level in the polynomial
hierarchy, face the difficulty of undecidability. These classes, including
NP, admit a logic formulation. By suitably restricting the formulation, one
finds the logic class MMSNP, or monotone monadic strict NP without
more >>>

This paper continues the work initiated by Creignou [Cre95] and
Khanna, Sudan and Williamson [KSW96] who classify maximization
problems derived from boolean constraint satisfaction. Here we
study the approximability of {\em minimization} problems derived
thence. A problem in this framework is characterized by a
collection F ... more >>>

We construct a provably pseudo-free family of finite computational groups under the general integer factoring intractability assumption. Moreover, this family has exponential size. But each element of a group in our pseudo-free family is represented by many bit strings.

We develop a method to construct elusive functions using techniques of commutative algebra and algebraic geometry. The key notions of this method are elusive subsets and evaluation mappings. We also develop the effective elimination theory combined with algebraic number field theory in order to construct concrete points outside the image ... more >>>

We study the question of algebraic rank or transcendence degree preserving homomorphisms over finite fields. This concept was first introduced by Beecken, Mittmann and Saxena (Information and Computing, 2013), and exploited by them, and Agrawal, Saha, Saptharishi and Saxena (Journal of Computing, 2016) to design algebraic independence based identity tests ... more >>>

Fortnow and Klivans proved the following relationship between efficient learning algorithms and circuit lower bounds: if a class $\mathcal{C} \subseteq P/poly$ of Boolean circuits is exactly learnable with membership and equivalence queries in polynomial-time, then $EXP^{NP} \not \subseteq \mathcal{C}$ (the class $EXP^{NP}$ was subsequently improved to $P$ by Hitchcock and ... more >>>

We consider the problem of efficiently constructing an as large as possible family of permutations such that each pair of permutations are far part (i.e., disagree on a constant fraction of their inputs).
Specifically, for every $n\in\N$, we present a collection of $N=N(n)=(n!)^{\Omega(1)}$ pairwise far apart permutations $\{\pi_i:[n]\to[n]\}_{i\in[N]}$ and ... more >>>

Constructing a spanning tree of a graph is one of the most basic tasks in graph theory. Motivated by several recent studies of local graph algorithms, we consider the following variant of this problem. Let $G$ be a connected bounded-degree graph. Given an edge $e$ in $G$ we would like ... more >>>

Explicit construction of Ramsey graphs or graphs with no large clique or independent set has remained a challenging open problem for a long time. While Erdos's probabilistic argument shows the existence of graphs on 2^n vertices with no clique or independent set of size 2n, the best known explicit constructions ... more >>>

We define number-theoretic error-correcting codes based on algebraic
number fields, thereby providing a generalization of Chinese Remainder
Codes akin to the generalization of Reed-Solomon codes to
Algebraic-geometric codes. Our construction is very similar to
(and in fact less general than) the one given by (Lenstra 1986), but
the ... more >>>

In this work we give two new constructions of $\epsilon$-biased
generators. Our first construction answers an open question of
Dodis and Smith, and our second construction
significantly extends a result of Mossel et al.
In particular we obtain the following results:

1. We construct a family of asymptotically good binary ... more >>>

We introduce a new approach to construct extractors -- combinatorial
objects akin to expander graphs that have several applications.
Our approach is based on error correcting codes and on the Nisan-Wigderson
pseudorandom generator. An application of our approach yields a
construction that is simple to ... more >>>

We give a simple combinatorial proof of the Chernoff-Hoeffding concentration bound~\cite{Chernoff, Hof63}, which says that the sum of independent $\{0,1\}$-valued random variables is highly concentrated around the expected value. Unlike the standard proofs,
our proof does not use the method of higher moments, but rather uses a simple ... more >>>

For a complexity class $C$ and language $L$, a constructive separation of $L \notin C$ gives an efficient algorithm (also called a refuter) to find counterexamples (bad inputs) for every $C$-algorithm attempting to decide $L$. We study the questions: Which lower bounds can be made constructive? What are the consequences ... more >>>

Classical data can be copied and re-used for computation, with adverse consequences economically and in terms of data privacy. Motivated by this, we formulate problems in one-way communication complexity where Alice holds some data and Bob holds $m$ inputs, and he wants to compute $m$ instances of a bipartite relation ... more >>>

Following up on the work of Megiddo and Vazirani \cite{MV.2007}, who
determined continuity properties of equilibrium prices and
allocations for perhaps the simplest market model, Fisher's linear
case, we do the same for:
\begin{itemize}
\item
Fisher's model with piecewise-linear, concave utilities
\item
Fisher's model with spending constraint utilities
\item
Arrow-Debreu's ... more >>>

Let $f$ be a univariate polynomial with real coefficients, $f\in\RR[X]$. Subdivision algorithms based on algebraic techniques (e.g., Sturm or Descartes methods) are widely used for isolating the roots of $f$ in a given interval. In this paper, we consider subdivision algorithms based on purely numerical primitives such as function evaluation.
more >>>

We introduce a continuous analogue of the Learning with Errors (LWE) problem, which we name CLWE. We give a polynomial-time quantum reduction from worst-case lattice problems to CLWE, showing that CLWE enjoys similar hardness guarantees to those of LWE. Alternatively, our result can also be seen as opening new avenues ... more >>>

We characterize several complexity measures for the resolution of Tseitin formulas in terms of a two person cop-robber game. Our game is a slight variation of the one Seymour and Thomas used in order to characterize the tree-width parameter. For any undirected graph, by counting the number of cops needed ... more >>>

We improve the best known upper bounds on the density of corner-free sets over quasirandom groups from inverse poly-logarithmic to quasi-polynomial. We make similarly substantial improvements to the best known lower bounds on the communication complexity of a large class of permutation functions in the 3-player Number-on-Forehead model. Underpinning both ... more >>>

Locally decodable codes (LDCs) are error correcting codes with the extra property that it is sufficient to read just a small number of positions of a possibly corrupted codeword in order to recover any one position of the input. To achieve this, it is necessary to use randomness in the ... more >>>

A survey on correlation bounds against polynomials.

We revisit the gate elimination method, generalize it to prove correlation bounds of boolean circuits with Parity, and also derive deterministic #SAT algorithms for small linear-size circuits. In particular, we prove that, for boolean circuits of size $3n - n^{0.51}$, the correlation with Parity is at most $2^{-n^{\Omega(1)}}$, and there ... more >>>

We show that for any coprime $m,r$ there is a circuit of the form $\text{MOD}_m\circ \text{AND}_{d(n)}$ whose correlation with $\text{MOD}_r$ is at least $2^{-O\left( \frac{n}{d(n)} \right) }$. This is the first correlation lower bound for arbitrary $m,r$, whereas previously lower bounds were known for prime $m$. Our motivation is the ... more >>>

Recently there has been much interest in Gowers uniformity norms from the perspective of theoretical computer science. This is mainly due to the fact that these norms provide a method for testing whether the maximum correlation of a function $f:\mathbb{F}_p^n \rightarrow \mathbb{F}_p$ with polynomials of degree at most $d \le ... more >>>

In this work we show a general reduction from high dimensional complexes to their links based on the spectral properties of the links. We use this reduction to show that if a certain property is testable in the links, then it is also testable in the complex. In particular, we ... more >>>

We present two main results regarding the complexity of counting the number of $t$-cliques in a graph.

\begin{enumerate}
\item{\em A worst-case to average-case reduction}:
We reduce counting $t$-cliques in any $n$-vertex graph to counting $t$-cliques in typical $n$-vertex graphs that are drawn from a simple distribution of min-entropy ${\widetilde\Omega}(n^2)$. For ... more >>>

Finding an irreducible factor, of a polynomial $f(x)$ modulo a prime $p$, is not known to be in deterministic polynomial time. Though there is such a classical algorithm that {\em counts} the number of irreducible factors of $f\bmod p$. We can ask the same question modulo prime-powers $p^k$. The irreducible ... more >>>

The class NC$^1$ of problems solvable by bounded fan-in circuit families of logarithmic depth is known to be contained in logarithmic space L, but not much about the converse is known. In this paper we examine the structure of classes in between NC$^1$ and L based on counting functions or, ... more >>>

We study counting various types of con gurations in certain classes of graph
automata viewed as discrete dynamical systems. The graph automata models
of our interest are Sequential and Synchronous Dynamical Systems (SDSs and
SyDSs, respectively). These models have been proposed as a mathematical foun-
dation for a theory of ... more >>>

In this paper we first give a uniform $AC^0$ algorithm which uses
partial sums to compute multiple addition. Then we use it to show
that multiple addition is computable in uniform $TC^0$ by using
$count$ only once sequentially. By constructing bit matrix for
multiple addition, ... more >>>

We give a \#NC$^1$ upper bound for the problem of counting accepting paths in any fixed visibly pushdown automaton. Our algorithm involves a non-trivial adaptation of the arithmetic formula evaluation algorithm of Buss, Cook, Gupta, Ramachandran (BCGR: SICOMP 21(4), 1992). We also show that the problem is \#NC$^1$ hard. Our ... more >>>

Detecting and counting the number of copies of certain subgraphs (also known as {\em network motifs\/} or {\em graphlets\/}), is motivated by applications in a variety of areas ranging from Biology to the study of the World-Wide-Web. Several polynomial-time algorithms have been suggested for counting or detecting the number of ... more >>>

We consider the problem of counting the number of copies of a fixed graph $H$ within an input graph $G$. This is one of the most well-studied algorithmic graph problems, with many theoretical and practical applications. We focus on solving this problem when the input $G$ has {\em bounded degeneracy}. ... more >>>

Counting the number of perfect matchings in arbitrary graphs is a $\#$P-complete problem. However, for some restricted classes of graphs the problem can be solved efficiently. In the case of planar graphs, and even for $K_{3,3}$-free graphs, Vazirani showed that it is in NC$^2$. The technique there is to compute ... more >>>

A central result in the theory of Cryptography, by Hastad, Imagliazzo, Luby and Levin [SICOMP’99], demonstrates that the existence one-way functions (OWF) implies the existence of pseudo-random generators (PRGs). Despite the fundamental importance of this result, and several elegant improvements/simplifications, analyses of constructions of PRGs from OWFs remain complex (both ... more >>>

We study the power of balanced regular leaf-languages.
First, we investigate (i) regular languages that are
polylog-time reducible to languages in dot-depth 1/2 and
(ii) regular languages that are polylog-time decidable.
For both classes we provide

- forbidden-pattern characterizations, and
- characterizations in terms of regular expressions.

Both ... more >>>

A covering code is a set of codewords with the property that the union of balls, suitably defined, around these codewords covers an entire space. Generally, the goal is to find the covering code with the minimum size codebook. While most prior work on covering codes has focused on the ... more >>>

We study the covering complexity of constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs). The covering number of a CSP instance C, denoted $\nu(C)$, is the smallest number of assignments to the variables, such that each constraint is satisfied by at least one of the assignments. This covering notion describes situations in which we ... more >>>

Rossman [In Proc. 34th Comput. Complexity Conf., 2019] introduced the notion of criticality. The criticality of a Boolean function $f : \{0, 1\}^n\to \{0, 1\}$ is the minimum $\lambda \geq 1$ such that for all positive integers $t$,
\[Pr_{\rho\sim R_p} [\text{DT}_{\text{depth}}(f|_\rho) \geq t] \leq (p\lambda)^t.\]
.
Håstad’s celebrated switching lemma ... more >>>

This paper proves the first super-logarithmic lower bounds on the cell probe complexity of dynamic \emph{boolean} (a.k.a. decision) data structure problems, a long-standing milestone in data structure lower bounds.

We introduce a new method for proving dynamic cell probe lower bounds and use it to prove a $\tilde{\Omega}(\log^{1.5} ... more >>>

Which computational intractability assumptions are inherent to cryptography? We present a broad framework to pose and investigate this question.
We first aim to understand the “cryptographic complexity” of various tasks, independent of any computational assumptions. In our framework the cryptographic tasks are modeled as multi- party computation functionalities. We consider ... more >>>

We develop new tools to study the relative complexities of secure
multi-party computation tasks (functionalities) in the Universal
Composition framework. When one task can be securely realized using
another task as a black-box, we interpret this as a
qualitative, complexity-theoretic reduction between the two tasks.
Virtually all previous characterizations of ... more >>>

We investigate the decoding problem of Reed-Solomon Codes (aka: the Polynomial Reconstruction Problem -- PR) from a cryptographic hardness perspective. First, following the standard methodology for constructing cryptographically strong primitives, we formulate a decisional intractability assumption related to the PR problem. Then, based on this assumption we show: (i) hardness ... more >>>

Constant parallel-time cryptography allows to perform complex cryptographic tasks at an ultimate level of parallelism, namely, by local functions that each of their output bits depend on a constant number of input bits. A natural way to obtain local cryptographic constructions is to use \emph{random local functions} in which each ... more >>>

We give the first representation-independent hardness results for
PAC learning intersections of halfspaces, a central concept class
in computational learning theory. Our hardness results are derived
from two public-key cryptosystems due to Regev, which are based on the
worst-case hardness of well-studied lattice problems. Specifically, we
prove that a polynomial-time ... more >>>

A version of time-bounded Kolmogorov complexity, denoted KT, has received attention in the past several years, due to its close connection to circuit complexity and to the Minimum Circuit Size Problem MCSP. Essentially all results about the complexity of MCSP hold also for MKTP (the problem of computing the KT ... more >>>

Reductions between problems, the mainstay of theoretical computer science, efficiently map an instance of one problem to an instance of another in such a way that solving the latter allows solving the former. The subject of this work is ``lossy'' reductions, where the reduction loses some information about the input ... more >>>

Let $\mktp[s]$ be the set of strings $x$ such that $K^t(x) \leq s(|x|)$, where $K^t(x)$ denotes the $t$-bounded Kolmogorov complexity of the truthtable described by $x$. Our main theorem shows that for an appropriate notion of mild average-case hardness, for every $\varepsilon>0$, polynomial $t(n) \geq (1+\varepsilon)n$, and every ``nice'' class ... more >>>

We study integrality gaps for SDP relaxations of constraint satisfaction problems, in the hierarchy of SDPs defined by Lasserre. Schoenebeck recently showed the first integrality gaps for these
problems, showing that for MAX k-XOR, the ratio of the SDP optimum to the integer optimum may be as large as ... more >>>

We study the complexity of Boolean constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs) when the assignment must have Hamming weight in some congruence class modulo $M$, for various choices of the modulus $M$. Due to the known classification of tractable Boolean CSPs, this mainly reduces to the study of three cases: 2SAT, HornSAT, ... more >>>

We revisit the Raz-Safra plane-vs.-plane test and study the closely related cube vs. cube test. In this test the tester has access to a "cubes table" which assigns to every cube a low degree polynomial. The tester randomly selects two cubes (affine sub-spaces of dimension $3$) that intersect on a ... more >>>

We define new functions based on the Andreev function and prove that they require $n^{3}/polylog(n)$ formula size to compute. The functions we consider are generalizations of the Andreev function using compositions with the majority function. Our arguments apply to composing a hard function with any function that agrees with the ... more >>>

Cumulative memory---the sum of space used over the steps of a computation---is a fine-grained measure of time-space complexity that is a more accurate measure of cost for algorithms with infrequent spikes in memory usage in the context of technologies such as cloud computing that allow dynamic allocation and de-allocation of ... more >>>

We exhibit a polynomial time computable plane curve GAMMA that has finite length, does not intersect itself, and is smooth except at one endpoint, but has the following property. For every computable parametrization f of GAMMA and every positive integer n, there is some positive-length subcurve of GAMMA that f ... more >>>

The width complexity measure plays a central role in Resolution and other propositional proof systems like Polynomial Calculus (under the name of degree). The study of width lower bounds is the most extended method for proving size lower bounds, and it is known that for these systems, proofs with small ... more >>>