Let $\mathcal{F} = \{F_1, \ldots, F_m\}$ be a finite set of irreducible homogeneous multivariate polynomials of degree at most $3$ such that $F_i$ does not divide $F_j$ for $i\neq j$.
We say that $\mathcal{F}$ is a cubic radical Sylvester-Gallai configuration if for any two distinct $F_i,F_j$ there exists a ... more >>>

We prove a higher codimensional radical Sylvester-Gallai type theorem for quadratic polynomials, simultaneously generalizing [Han65, Shp20]. Hansen's theorem is a high-dimensional version of the classical Sylvester-Gallai theorem in which the incidence condition is given by high-dimensional flats instead of lines. We generalize Hansen's theorem to the setting of quadratic forms ... more >>>

We consider the celebrated radio network model for abstracting communication in wireless networks. In this model, in any round, each node in the network may broadcast a message to all its neighbors. However, a node is able to hear a message broadcast by a neighbor only if no collision occurred, ... more >>>

A $k$-uniform hypergraph is said to be $r$-rainbow colorable if there is an $r$-coloring of its vertices such that every hyperedge intersects all $r$ color classes. Given as input such a hypergraph, finding a $r$-rainbow coloring of it is NP-hard for all $k \ge 3$ and $r \ge 2$. ... more >>>

The random $\Delta$-CNF model is one of the most important distribution over $\Delta\text{-}\mathrm{SAT}$ instances. It is closely connected to various areas of computer science, statistical physics, and is a benchmark for satisfiability algorithms. Fleming, Pankratov, Pitassi, and Robere and independently Hrubes and Pudlak showed that when $\Delta = \Theta(\log n)$, ... more >>>

Let $\phi$ be a 3CNF formula with n variables and m clauses. A
simple nonconstructive argument shows that when m is
sufficiently large compared to n, most 3CNF formulas are not
satisfiable. It is an open question whether there is an efficient
refutation algorithm that for most such formulas proves ... more >>>

Informally stated, we present here a randomized algorithm that given blackbox access to the polynomial $f$ computed by an unknown/hidden arithmetic formula $\phi$ reconstructs, on the average, an equivalent or smaller formula $\hat{\phi}$ in time polynomial in the size of its output $\hat{\phi}$.

Specifically, we consider arithmetic formulas wherein the ... more >>>

The random k-SAT model is the most important and well-studied distribution over
k-SAT instances. It is closely connected to statistical physics; it is used as a testbench for
satisfiablity algorithms, and lastly average-case hardness over this distribution has also
been linked to hardness of approximation via Feige’s hypothesis. In this ... more >>>

We study the space required by Polynomial Calculus refutations of random $k$-CNFs. We are interested in how many monomials one needs to keep in memory to carry on a refutation. More precisely we show that for $k \geq 4$ a refutation of a random $k$-CNF of $\Delta n$ clauses and ... more >>>

We prove new lower bounds on the sizes of proofs in the Cutting Plane proof system, using a concept that we call "unsatisfiability certificate". This approach is, essentially, equivalent to the well-known feasible interpolation method, but is applicable to CNF formulas that do not seem suitable for interpolation. Specifically, we ... more >>>

The classical zero-one law for first-order logic on random graphs says that for every first-order property $\varphi$ in the theory of graphs and every $p \in (0,1)$, the probability that the random graph $G(n, p)$ satisfies $\varphi$ approaches either $0$ or $1$ as $n$ approaches infinity. It is well known ... more >>>

We study the problem of how well a typical multivariate polynomial can be approximated by lower degree polynomials over $\F$.
We prove that, with very high probability, a random degree $d$ polynomial has only an exponentially small correlation with all polynomials of degree $d-1$, for all degrees $d$ up to ... more >>>

We construct a nondeterministic analogue to \textbf{APP}, denoted
\textbf{NAPP}; which is the set of all real valued functions
$f: \{ 0,1 \}^{*} \rightarrow [0,1]$, that are approximable within 1/$k$,
by a probabilistic nondeterministic transducer, in time poly($n,1^{k}$).
We show that the subset of all Boolean ... more >>>

We study the \emph{random resolution} refutation system defined in~[Buss et al. 2014]. This attempts to capture the notion of a resolution refutation that may make mistakes but is correct most of the time. By proving the equivalence of several different definitions, we show that this concept is robust. On the ... more >>>

A polynomial threshold function (PTF) $f:\mathbb{R}^n \rightarrow \mathbb{R}$ is a function of the form $f(x) = sign(p(x))$ where $p$ is a polynomial of degree at most $d$. PTFs are a classical and well-studied complexity class with applications across complexity theory, learning theory, approximation theory, quantum complexity and more. We address ... more >>>

We give a nearly-optimal algorithm for testing uniformity of distributions supported on $\{-1,1\}^n$, which makes $\tilde O (\sqrt{n}/\varepsilon^2)$ queries to a subcube conditional sampling oracle (Bhattacharyya and Chakraborty (2018)). The key technical component is a natural notion of random restriction for distributions on $\{-1,1\}^n$, and a quantitative analysis of how ... more >>>

We present a new efficient sampling method for approximating
r-dimensional Maximum Constraint Satisfaction Problems, MAX-rCSP, on
n variables up to an additive error \epsilon n^r.We prove a new
general paradigm in that it suffices, for a given set of constraints,
to pick a small uniformly random ... more >>>

We consider the problem of random selection, where $p$ players follow a protocol to jointly select a random element of a universe of size $n$. However, some of the players may be adversarial and collude to force the output to lie in a small subset of the universe. We describe ... more >>>

Random linear codes (RLCs) are well known to have nice combinatorial properties and near-optimal parameters in many different settings. However, getting explicit constructions matching the parameters of RLCs is challenging, and RLCs are hard to decode efficiently. This motivated several previous works to study the problem of partially derandomizing RLCs, ... more >>>

Consider the family of bounded degree graphs in any minor-closed family (such as planar graphs). Let d be the degree bound and n be the number of vertices of such a graph. Graphs in these classes have hyperfinite decompositions, where, for a sufficiently small ? > 0, one removes
?dn ... more >>>

Random walks on expanders are a powerful tool which found applications in many areas of theoretical computer science, and beyond. However, they come with an inherent cost -- the spectral expansion of the corresponding power graph deteriorates at a rate that is exponential in the length of the walk. As ... more >>>

In this work we use random walks on expanders in order to
relax the properties of hitting sets required for partially
derandomizing one-side error algorithms. Building on a well-known
probability amplification technique [AKS87,CW89,IZ89], we use
random walks on expander graphs of subexponential (in the
random bit complexity) size so as ... more >>>

For a family X of k-subsets of the set 1...n, let |X| be the cardinality of X and let Gamma(X, mu) be the expected maximum weight of a subset from X when the weights of 1...n are chosen independently at random from a symmetric probability distribution mu on R. We ... more >>>

We study probabilistic complexity classes and questions of derandomisation from a logical point of view. For each logic $\mathcal{L}$ we introduce a new logic $\mathsf{BP}\mathcal{L}$, bounded error probabilistic $\mathcal{L}$, which is defined from $\mathcal{L}$ in a similar way as the
complexity class $\mathsf{BPP}$, bounded error probabilistic polynomial time, is defined ... more >>>

We prove two results about randomised query complexity $\mathrm{R}(f)$. First, we introduce a linearised complexity measure $\mathrm{LR}$ and show that it satisfies an inner-optimal composition theorem: $\mathrm{R}(f\circ g) \geq \Omega(\mathrm{R}(f) \mathrm{LR}(g))$ for all partial $f$ and $g$, and moreover, $\mathrm{LR}$ is the largest possible measure with this property. In particular, ... more >>>

In the manuscript F. Ablayev and M. Karpinski, On the power of
randomized branching programs (generalization of ICALP'96 paper
results for the case of pure boolean function, available at
http://www.ksu.ru/~ablayev) we exhibited a simple boolean functions
$f_n$ in $n$ variables such that:

1) $f_{n}$ can be computed ... more >>>

We prove $\Omega (n^2)$ complexity \emph{lower bound} for the
general model of \emph{randomized computation trees} solving
the \emph{Knapsack Problem}, and more generally \emph{Restricted
Integer Programming}. This is the \emph{first nontrivial} lower
bound proven for this model of computation. The method of the ... more >>>

A catalytic Turing machine is a model of computation that is created by equipping a Turing machine with an additional auxiliary tape which is initially filled with arbitrary content; the machine can read or write on auxiliary tape during the computation but when it halts auxiliary tape’s initial content must ... more >>>

The problem of Scheduling $n$ Independent Jobs
on $m$ Unrelated Parallel Machines, when $m$
is fixed, is considered. The standard problem
of minimizing the makespan of the schedule
(SUM) and the bicriteria problem of scheduling
with bounded makespan and cost (SUMC), are
addressed, and randomized fully linear time
more >>>

The paper [Harry Buhrman, Michal Koucky, Nikolay Vereshchagin. Randomized Individual Communication Complexity. IEEE Conference on Computational Complexity 2008: 321-331] considered communication complexity of the following problem. Alice has a binary string $x$ and Bob a binary string $y$, both of length $n$, and they want to compute or approximate
more >>>

We show that \emph{randomized} communication complexity can be superlogarithmic in the partition number of the associated communication matrix, and we obtain near-optimal \emph{randomized} lower bounds for the Clique vs.\ Independent Set problem. These results strengthen the deterministic lower bounds obtained in prior work (G\"o\"os, Pitassi, and Watson, {\small FOCS~2015}).

We survey some of the recent results on the complexity of recognizing
n-dimensional linear arrangements and convex polyhedra by randomized
algebraic decision trees. We give also a number of concrete applications
of these results. In particular, we derive first nontrivial, in fact
quadratic, ... more >>>

In this paper we show that polynomial identity testing for
noncommutative circuits of size $s$, computing a polynomial in
$\mathbb{F}\langle z_1,z_2,\cdots,z_n \rangle$, can be done by a randomized algorithm
with running time polynomial in $s$ and $n$. This answers a question
that has been open for over ten years.

The ... more >>>

Equivalence testing for a polynomial family $\{g_m\}_{m \in \mathbb{N}}$ over a field F is the following problem: Given black-box access to an $n$-variate polynomial $f(\mathbb{x})$, where $n$ is the number of variables in $g_m$ for some $m \in \mathbb{N}$, check if there exists an $A \in \text{GL}(n,\text{F})$ such that $f(\mathbb{x}) ... more >>>

We study the composition question for bounded-error randomized query complexity: Is R(f o g) = Omega(R(f) R(g)) for all Boolean functions f and g? We show that inserting a simple Boolean function h, whose query complexity is only Theta(log R(g)), in between f and g allows us to prove R(f ... more >>>

Let R_eps denote randomized query complexity for error probability eps, and R:=R_{1/3}. In this work we investigate whether a perfect composition theorem R(f o g^n)=Omega(R(f).R(g)) holds for a relation f in {0,1}^n * S and a total inner function g:{0,1}^m \to {0, 1}.

Let D^(prod) denote the maximum distributional query ... more >>>

The worst-case complexity of an implementation of Quicksort depends
on the random number generator that is used to select the pivot
elements. In this paper we estimate the expected number of
comparisons of Quicksort as a function in the entropy of the random
source. We give upper and lower bounds ... more >>>

A classic result of Nisan [SICOMP '91] states that the deterministic decision tree depth complexity of every total Boolean function is at most the cube of its randomized decision tree depth complexity. The question whether randomness helps in significantly reducing the size of decision trees appears not to have been ... more >>>

We prove the first polynomial separation between randomized and deterministic time-space tradeoffs of multi-output functions. In particular, we present a total function that on the input of $n$ elements in $[n]$, outputs $O(n)$ elements, such that:

- There exists a randomized oblivious algorithm with space $O(\log n)$, time $O(n\log n)$ ... more >>>

We study a simple Markov chain, known as the Glauber dynamics, for generating a random <i>k</i>-coloring of a <i>n</i>-vertex graph with maximum degree &Delta;. We prove that the dynamics converges to a random coloring after <i>O</i>(<i>n</i> log <i>n</i>) steps assuming <i>k</i> &ge; <i>k</i>₀ for some absolute constant <i>k</i>₀, and either: ... more >>>

Reed-Solomon codes are a classic family of error-correcting codes consisting of evaluations of low-degree polynomials over a finite field on some sequence of distinct field elements. They are widely known for their optimal unique-decoding capabilities, but their list-decoding capabilities are not fully understood. Given the prevalence of Reed-Solomon codes, a ... more >>>

We introduce randomized time-bounded Kolmogorov complexity (rKt), a natural extension of Levin's notion of Kolmogorov complexity from 1984. A string w of low rKt complexity can be decompressed from a short representation via a time-bounded algorithm that outputs w with high probability.

This complexity measure gives rise to a ... more >>>

We extend the tools for proving lower bounds for randomized branching
programs by presenting a new technique for the read-once case which is
applicable to a large class of functions. This technique fills the gap
between simple methods only applicable for OBDDs and the well-known
"rectangle technique" of Borodin, Razborov ... more >>>

We show that the promise problem of distinguishing $n$-bit strings of hamming weight $\ge 1/2 + \Omega(1/\log^{d-1} n)$ from strings of weight $\le 1/2 - \Omega(1/\log^{d-1} n)$ can be solved by explicit, randomized (unbounded-fan-in) poly(n)-size depth-$d$ circuits with error $\le 1/3$, but cannot be solved by deterministic poly(n)-size depth-$(d+1)$ circuits, ... more >>>

We initiate a comprehensive study of the question of randomness extractions from two somewhat dependent sources of defective randomness.
Specifically, we present three natural models, which are based on different natural perspectives on the notion of bounded dependency between a pair of distributions.
Going from the more restricted model ... more >>>

We study two variants of seeded randomness extractors. The first one, as studied by Goldreich et al. \cite{goldreich2015randomness}, is seeded extractors that can be computed by $AC^0$ circuits. The second one, as introduced by Bogdanov and Guo \cite{bogdanov2013sparse}, is (strong) extractor families that consist of sparse transformations, i.e., functions that ... more >>>

We study extractors computable in uniform $\mathrm{AC}^0$ and uniform $\mathrm{NC}^1$.

For the $\mathrm{AC}^0$ setting, we give a construction such that for every $k \ge n/ \mathrm{poly} \log n, \eps \ge 2^{-\mathrm{poly} \log n}$, it can extract $(1-\gamma)k$ randomness from an $(n, k)$ source for an arbitrary constant ... more >>>

Curve samplers are sampling algorithms that proceed by viewing the domain as a vector space over a finite field, and randomly picking a low-degree curve in it as the sample. Curve samplers exhibit a nice property besides the sampling property: the restriction of low-degree polynomials over the domain to the ... more >>>

We construct a randomness-efficient averaging sampler that is computable by uniform constant-depth circuits with parity gates (i.e., in AC^0[mod 2]). Our sampler matches the parameters achieved by random walks on constant-degree expander graphs, allowing us to apply a variety expander-based techniques within NC^1. For example, we obtain the following results:

Range Avoidance (AVOID) is a total search problem where, given a Boolean circuit $C\colon\{0,1\}^n\to\{0,1\}^m$, $m>n$, the task is to find a $y\in\{0,1\}^m$ outside the range of $C$. For an integer $k\geq 2$, $NC^0_k$-AVOID is a special case of AVOID where each output bit of $C$ depends on at most $k$ ... more >>>

In the range avoidance problem, the input is a multi-output Boolean circuit with more outputs than inputs, and the goal is to find a string outside its range (which is guaranteed to exist). We show that well-known explicit construction questions such as finding binary linear codes achieving the Gilbert-Varshamov bound ... more >>>

The *range avoidance problem*, denoted as $\mathcal{C}$-$\rm Avoid$, asks to find a non-output of a given $\mathcal{C}$-circuit $C:\{0,1\}^n\to\{0,1\}^\ell$ with stretch $\ell>n$. This problem has recently received much attention in complexity theory for its connections with circuit lower bounds and other explicit construction problems. Inspired by the Algorithmic Method for circuit ... more >>>

Lov\'{a}sz and Schrijver introduced several lift and project methods for $0$-$1$ integer programs, now collectively known as Lov\'{a}sz-Schrijver ($LS$) hierarchies. Several lower bounds have since been proven for the rank of various linear programming relaxations in the $LS$ and $LS_+$ hierarchies. In this paper we investigate rank bounds in the ... more >>>

A $(q,k,t)$-design matrix is an m x n matrix whose pattern of zeros/non-zeros satisfies the following design-like condition: each row has at most $q$ non-zeros, each column has at least $k$ non-zeros and the supports of every two columns intersect in at most t rows. We prove that the rank ... more >>>

We show that polynomially rankable distributions
do not provide harder instances than uniform distributions
for NP problems. In particular, we show that if Levin's
randomized tiling problem is solvable in polynomial time on
average, then every NP problem under any p-rankable
... more >>>

In a seminal work, Kopparty et al. (J. ACM 2017) constructed asymptotically good $n$-bit locally decodable codes (LDC) with $2^{\widetilde{O}(\sqrt{\log{n}})}$ queries. A key ingredient in their construction is a distance amplification procedure by Alon et al. (FOCS 1995) which amplifies the distance $\delta$ of a code to a constant at ... more >>>

We show that every NP relation that can be verified by a bounded-depth polynomial-sized circuit, or a bounded-space polynomial-time algorithm, has a computational zero-knowledge proof (with statistical soundness) with communication that is only additively larger than the witness length. Our construction relies only on the minimal assumption that one-way functions ... more >>>

In this note we show that the Raz-McKenzie simulation algorithm which lifts deterministic query lower bounds to deterministic communication lower bounds can be implemented for functions $f$ composed with the Inner Product gadget $g_{IP}(x,y) = \sum_i x_iy_i \mathrm{mod} \, 2$ of logarithmic size. In other words, given a function $f: ... more >>>

Given the polygonal schema embedding of an $O(log n)$ genus graph $G$ and two vertices
$s$ and $t$ in $G$, we show that deciding if there is a path from $s$ to $t$ in $G$ is in unambiguous
logarithmic space.

We show that the reachability problem for directed graphs
that are either K_{3,3}-free or K_5-free
is in unambiguous log-space, UL \cap coUL.
This significantly extends the result of Bourke, Tewari, and Vinodchandran
that the reachability problem for directed planar graphs
is in UL \cap coUL.

Our algorithm decomposes ... more >>>

Chemical reaction networks (CRNs) model the behavior of molecules in a well-mixed system. The emerging field of molecular programming uses CRNs not only as a descriptive tool, but as a programming language for chemical computation. Recently, Chen, Doty and Soloveichik introduced a new model of chemical kinetics, rate-independent continuous CRNs ... more >>>

We show that two complexity classes introduced about two decades ago are equal. ReachUL is the class of problems decided by nondeterministic log-space machines which on every input have at most one computation path from the start configuration to any other configuration. ReachFewL, a natural generalization of ReachUL, is the ... more >>>

An \emph{arithmetic read-once formula} (ROF for short) is a
formula (a circuit whose underlying graph is a tree) in which the
operations are $\{+,\times\}$ and such that every input variable
labels at most one leaf. A \emph{preprocessed ROF} (PROF for
short) is a ROF in which we are allowed to ... more >>>

Computational complexity is concerned with the complexity of solving
problems and computing functions and not with the complexity of verifying
circuit designs.
The importance of formal circuit verification is evident.
Therefore, a framework of a complexity theory for formal circuit
verification with binary decision diagrams ... more >>>

We highlight the challenge of proving correlation bounds
between boolean functions and integer-valued polynomials,
where any non-boolean output counts against correlation.

We prove that integer-valued polynomials of degree $\frac 12
\log_2 \log_2 n$ have zero correlation with parity. Such a
result is false for modular and threshold polynomials.
Its proof ... more >>>

A celebrated theorem of Savitch states that NSPACE(S) is contained DSPACE(S^2). In particular, Savitch gave a deterministic algorithm to solve ST-CONNECTIVITY (an NL-complete problem) using O(log^2{n}) space, implying NL is in DSPACE(log^2{n}). While Savitch’s theorem itself has not been improved in the last four decades, studying the space complexity of ... more >>>

We prove that any subset $A \subseteq [3]^n$ with $3^{-n}|A| \ge (\log\log\log\log n)^{-c}$ contains a combinatorial line of length $3$, i.e., $x, y, z \in A$, not all equal, with $x_i=y_i=z_i$ or $(x_i,y_i,z_i)=(0,1,2)$ for all $i = 1, 2, \dots, n$. This improves on the previous best bound of $3^{-n}|A| ... more >>>

We aim to understand inherent reasons for lower bounds for QBF proof systems and revisit and compare two previous approaches in this direction.

The first of these relates size lower bounds for strong QBF Frege systems to circuit lower bounds via strategy extraction (Beyersdorff & Pich, LICS'16). Here we ... more >>>

The log-rank conjecture is one of the fundamental open problems in communication complexity. It speculates that the deterministic communication complexity of any two-party function is equal to the log of the rank of its associated matrix, up to polynomial factors. Despite much research, we still know very little about this ... more >>>

Is randomness ever necessary for space-efficient computation? It is commonly conjectured that L = BPL, meaning that halting decision algorithms can always be derandomized without increasing their space complexity by more than a constant factor. In the past few years (say, from 2017 to 2022), there has been some exciting ... more >>>

Scaling problems have a rich and diverse history, and thereby have found numerous
applications in several fields of science and engineering. For instance, the matrix scaling problem
has had applications ranging from theoretical computer science to telephone forecasting,
economics, statistics, optimization, among many other fields. Recently, a generalization of matrix
more >>>

It is known that the size of monotone arithmetic $(+,\ast)$ circuits can be exponentially decreased by allowing just one division "at the very end," at the output gate. A natural question is: can the size of $(+,\ast)$ circuits be substantially reduced if we allow divisions "at the very beginning," that ... more >>>

In constraint satisfaction problems over finite domains, some variables
can be frozen, that is, they take the same value in all possible solutions. We study the complexity of the problem of recognizing frozen variables with restricted sets of constraint relations allowed in the
instances. We show that the complexity of ... more >>>

Let $\mathbb{F}_q$ be a finite field and $f(x) \in \mathbb{F}_q(x)$ be a rational function over $\mathbb{F}_q$.
The decision problem {\bf PermFunction} consists of deciding whether $f(x)$ induces a permutation on
the elements of $\mathbb{F}_q$. That is, we want to decide whether the corresponding map
$f : \mathbb{F}_q ... more >>>

Motivated by a concrete problem and with the goal of understanding the sense in which the complexity of streaming algorithms is related to the complexity of formal languages, we investigate the problem Dyck(s) of checking matching parentheses, with $s$ different types of parenthesis.

We present a one-pass randomized streaming ... more >>>

We give new and efficient black-box reconstruction algorithms for some classes of depth-$3$ arithmetic circuits. As a consequence, we obtain the first efficient algorithm for computing the tensor rank and for finding the optimal tensor decomposition as a sum of rank-one tensors when then input is a {\it constant-rank} tensor. ... more >>>

Reconstruction of arithmertic circuits has been heavily studied in the past few years and has connections to proving lower bounds and deterministic identity testing. In this paper we present a polynomial time randomized algorithm for reconstructing $\Sigma\Pi\Sigma(2)$ circuits over $\R$, i.e. depth$-3$ circuits with fan-in $2$ at the top addition ... more >>>

We present a deterministic algorithm for reconstructing multilinear $\Sigma\Pi\Sigma\Pi(k)$ circuits, i.e. multilinear depth-$4$ circuits with fan-in $k$ at the top $+$ gate. For any fixed $k$, given black-box access to a polynomial $f \in \mathbb{F}[x_{1},x_{2},\ldots ,x_{n}]$ computable by a multilinear $\Sigma\Pi\Sigma\Pi(k)$ circuit of size $s$, the algorithm runs in time ... more >>>

We present a randomized algorithm for reconstructing multilinear depth-4 arithmetic circuits with fan-in 2 at the top + gate. The algorithm is given blackbox access to a multilinear polynomial f in F[x_1,..,x_n] computable by a multilinear Sum-Product-Sum-Product(SPSP) circuit of size s and outputs an equivalent multilinear SPSP circuit, runs ... more >>>

An algebraic branching program (ABP) A can be modelled as a product expression $X_1\cdot X_2\cdot \dots \cdot X_d$, where $X_1$ and $X_d$ are $1 \times w$ and $w \times 1$ matrices respectively, and every other $X_k$ is a $w \times w$ matrix; the entries of these matrices are linear forms ... more >>>

A homogeneous depth three circuit $C$ computes a polynomial
$$f = T_1 + T_2 + ... + T_s ,$$ where each $T_i$ is a product of $d$ linear forms in $n$ variables over some underlying field $\mathbb{F}$. Given black-box access to $f$, can we efficiently reconstruct (i.e. proper learn) a ... more >>>

This record is a placeholder, replacing a record that was generated by mistake.

We develop a new method to prove communication lower bounds for composed functions of the form $f\circ g^n$ where $f$ is any boolean function on $n$ inputs and $g$ is a sufficiently ``hard'' two-party gadget. Our main structure theorem states that each rectangle in the communication matrix of $f \circ ... more >>>

We extend the concept of recursive definition on analytic functions. For special cases of linear primitive recursive definitions we show the existence of natural continuations of the over $\N$ primitive recursive functions to analytic functions. Especially, we show that solutions exist if the coefficients of the linear recursive equation are ... more >>>

In a recent work, Chen, Hoza, Lyu, Tal and Wu (FOCS 2023) showed an improved error reduction framework for the derandomization of regular read-once branching programs (ROBPs). Their result is based on a clever modification to the inverse Laplacian perspective of space-bounded derandomization, which was originally introduced by Ahmadinejad, Kelner, ... more >>>

We study query-efficient Probabilistically Checkable
Proofs (PCPs) and linearity tests. We focus on the number
of amortized query bits. A testing algorithm uses $q$ amortized
query bits if, for some constant $k$, it reads $qk$ bits and has
error probability at most $2^{-k}$. The best known ... more >>>

We address the fundamental question of whether the Nash equilibria of
a game can be computed in polynomial time. We describe certain
efficient reductions between this problem for
normal form games with a fixed number of players
and graphical games with fixed degree. Our main result is that ... more >>>

"As has often been the case with NP-completeness proofs, PPAD-completeness proofs will be eventually refined to cover simpler and more realistic looking classes of games. And then researchers will strive to identify even simpler classes." --Papadimitriou (chapter 2 of Algorithmic Game Theory book)

In a landmark paper, Papadimitriou introduced a ... more >>>

The 3SUM problem asks if there are three integers $a,b,c$ summing to $0$ in a given set of $n$ integers of magnitude poly($n$). Patrascu (STOC '10) reduces solving 3SUM in time $n^{2-\Omega(1)}$ to listing $m$ triangles in a graph with $m$ edges in time $m^{4/3-\Omega(1)}$.
In this note we present ... more >>>

We give new randomized algorithms for testing multivariate polynomial
identities over finite fields and rationals. The algorithms use
\lceil \sum_{i=1}^n \log(d_i+1)\rceil (plus \lceil\log\log C\rceil
in case of rationals where C is the largest coefficient)
random bits to test if a
polynomial P(x_1, ..., x_n) is zero where d_i is ... more >>>

We study the problem of finding a Tarski fixed point over the $k$-dimensional grid $[n]^k$. We give a black-box reduction from the Tarski problem to the same problem with an additional promise that the input function has a unique fixed point. It implies that the Tarski problem and the unique ... more >>>

We consider the task of testing whether a Boolean function $f:\{0,1\}^\ell\to\{0,1\}$
is the indicator function of an $(\ell-k)$-dimensional affine space.
An optimal tester for this property was presented by Parnas, Ron, and Samorodnitsky ({\em SIDMA}, 2002), by mimicking the celebrated linearity tester (of Blum, Luby and Rubinfeld, {\em JCSS}, 1993) ... more >>>

We reduce the problem of proving a "Boolean Unique Games Conjecture" (with gap $1-\delta$ vs. $1-C\delta$, for any $C> 1$, and sufficiently small $\delta>0$) to the problem of proving a PCP Theorem for a certain non-unique game.
In a previous work, Khot and Moshkovitz suggested an inefficient candidate reduction (i.e., ... more >>>

There are two approaches to solving a new supervised learning task: either
analyze the task independently or reduce it to a task that has already
been thoroughly analyzed. This paper investigates the latter approach for
classification problems. In addition to obvious theoretical motivations,
there is fairly strong empirical evidence that ... more >>>

We prove that all of the following assertions are equivalent:
There is a many-one complete disjoint NP-pair;
there is a strongly many-one complete disjoint NP-pair;
there is a Turing complete disjoint NP-pair such that all reductions
are smart reductions;
there is a complete disjoint NP-pair for one-to-one, invertible ... more >>>

The Small-Set Expansion Hypothesis (Raghavendra, Steurer, STOC 2010) is a natural hardness assumption concerning the problem of approximating the edge expansion of small sets in graphs. This hardness assumption is closely connected to the Unique Games Conjecture (Khot, STOC 2002). In particular, the Small-Set Expansion Hypothesis implies the Unique ... more >>>

We show that several reducibility notions coincide when applied to the
Graph Isomorphism (GI) problem. In particular we show that if a set is
many-one logspace reducible to GI, then it is in fact many-one AC^0
reducible to GI. For the case of Turing reducibilities we show that ... more >>>

This paper is motivated by a conjecture that BPP can be characterized in terms of polynomial-time nonadaptive reductions to the set of Kolmogorov-random strings. In this paper we show that an approach laid out by [Allender et al] to settle this conjecture cannot succeed without significant alteration, but that it ... more >>>

The concept of redundancy in SAT lead to more expressive and powerful proof search techniques, e.g. able to express various inprocessing techniques, and to interesting hierarchies of proof systems [Heule et.al’20, Buss-Thapen’19].
We propose a general way to integrate redundancy rules in MaxSAT, that is we define MaxSAT variants of ... more >>>

We show that a set is m-autoreducible if and only if it is m-mitotic. This solves a long standing open question in a surprising way. As a consequence of this unconditional result and recent work by Glasser et al., complete sets for all of the following complexity classes are m-mitotic: ... more >>>

This paper surveys the development of propositional proof complexity and the seminal contributions of Alasdair Urquhart. We focus on the central role of counting principles, and in particular Tseitin's graph tautologies, to most of the key advances in lower bounds in proof complexity. We reflect on a couple of key ... more >>>

The log-rank conjecture, a longstanding problem in communication complexity, has persistently eluded resolution for decades. Consequently, some recent efforts have focused on potential approaches for establishing the conjecture in the special case of XOR functions, where the communication matrix is lifted from a boolean function, and the rank of ... more >>>

Suppose a decision maker has to purchase a commodity over time with
varying prices and demands. In particular, the price per unit might
depend on the amount purchased and this price function might vary from
step to step. The decision maker has a buffer of bounded size for
storing units ... more >>>

We consider first order logic over words and show FO+MOD[<] is contained in MAJ[<] with three variables.
It is known that for the classes FO[<], FO+MOD[<], FO+GROUP[<] three variables suffice. In the case of MOD[<] even two variables are sufficient.

As a consequence we know that if TC^ 0 neq ... more >>>

Regular resolution is a refinement of the resolution proof system requiring that no variable be resolved on more than once along any path in the proof. It is known that there exist sequences of formulas that require exponential-size proofs in regular resolution while admitting polynomial-size proofs in resolution. Thus, with ... more >>>

We show that every high-entropy distribution is indistinguishable from an
efficiently samplable distribution of the same entropy. Specifically, we prove
that if $D$ is a distribution over $\{ 0,1\}^n$ of min-entropy at least $n-k$,
then for every $S$ and $\epsilon$ there is a circuit $C$ of size at most
$S\cdot ... more >>>

We advance the theory of QBF proof systems by showing the first simulation of the universal checking format QRAT by a theory-friendly system. We show that the sequent system G fully p-simulates QRAT, including the Extended Universal Reduction (EUR) rule which was recently used to show QRAT does not ... more >>>

In this short note, we revisit two hardness measures for resolution proofs: width and asymmetric width. It is known that for every unsatisfiable CNF F,

width(F \derives \Box) \le awidth(F \derives \Box) + max{ awidth(F \derives \Box), width(F)}.

We give a simple direct proof of the upper bound, ... more >>>

This paper extends Valiant's work on $\vp$ and $\vnp$ to the settings in which variables are not multiplicatively commutative and/or associative. Our main result is a theory of completeness for these algebraic worlds.
We define analogs of Valiant's classes $\vp$ and $\vnp$, as well as of the polynomials permanent ... more >>>

Relations and Equivalences Between Circuit Lower Bounds and Karp-Lipton Theorems

A frontier open problem in circuit complexity is to prove P^NP is not in SIZE[n^k] for all k; this is a necessary intermediate step towards NP is not in P/poly. Previously, for several classes containing P^NP, including NP^NP, ZPP^NP, and ... more >>>

In a recent result, Knop, Lovett, McGuire and Yuan (STOC 2021) proved the log-rank conjecture for communication complexity, up to $\log n$ factor, for any Boolean function composed with $AND$ function as the inner gadget. One of the main tools in this result was the relationship between monotone analogues of ... more >>>

Does the information complexity of a function equal its communication complexity? We examine whether any currently known techniques might be used to show a separation between the two notions. Recently, Ganor et al. provided such a separation in the distributional setting for a specific input distribution ?. We show that ... more >>>

We consider relative error low rank approximation of tensors with respect to the Frobenius norm. Namely, given an order-$q$ tensor $A \in \mathbb{R}^{\prod_{i=1}^q n_i}$, output a rank-$k$ tensor $B$ for which $\|A-B\|_F^2 \leq (1+\epsilon) {\rm OPT}$, where ${\rm OPT} = \inf_{\textrm{rank-}k~A'} \|A-A'\|_F^2$. Despite much success on obtaining relative error low ... more >>>

We show that for determinictic polynomial time computation, oracle access to
$\mathbf{APP}$, the class of real functions
approximable by probabilistic Turing machines, is the same as having oracle access to
promise-$\mathbf{BPP}$. First
we construct a mapping that maps every function in $\mathbf{APP}$ to a promise problem
more >>>

We consider Total Functional $\NP$ ($\TFNP$) search problems. Such problems are based on combinatorial principles that guarantee, through locally checkable conditions, that a solution to the problem exists in an exponentially-large domain, and have the property that any solution has a polynomial-size witness that can be verified in polynomial time. ... more >>>

We prove that relative to an oracle, there is no worst-case to errorless-average-case reduction for $\NP$. This result is the first progress on an open problem posed by Impagliazzo in 1995, namely to construct an oracle relative to which $\NP$ is worst-case hard but errorless-average-case easy. We also handle classes ... more >>>

We cement the intuitive connection between relaxed local correctability and local testing by presenting a concrete framework for building a relaxed locally correctable code from any family of linear locally testable codes with sufficiently high rate. When instantiated using the locally testable codes of Dinur et al. (STOC 2022), this ... more >>>

Locally decodable codes (LDCs) and locally correctable codes (LCCs) are error-correcting codes in which individual bits of the message and codeword, respectively, can be recovered by querying only few bits from a noisy codeword. These codes have found numerous applications both in theory and in practice.

A natural relaxation of ... more >>>

Locally decodable codes (LDCs) are error-correcting codes $C : \Sigma^k \to \Sigma^n$ that admit a local decoding algorithm that recovers each individual bit of the message by querying only a few bits from a noisy codeword. An important question in this line of research is to understand the optimal trade-off ... more >>>

Locally correctable codes (LCCs) are error correcting codes C : \Sigma^k \to \Sigma^n which admit local algorithms that correct any individual symbol of a corrupted codeword via a minuscule number of queries. This notion is stronger than that of locally decodable codes (LDCs), where the goal is to only recover ... more >>>

In their highly influential paper, Ben-Sasson, Goldreich, Harsha, Sudan, and Vadhan (STOC 2004) introduced the notion of a relaxed locally decodable code (RLDC). Similarly to a locally decodable code (Katz-Trevisan; STOC 2000), the former admits access to any desired message symbol with only a few queries to a possibly corrupted ... more >>>

Let $f : \{0,1\}^n \times \{0,1\}^n \rightarrow \{0,1\}$ be a 2-party function. For every product distribution $\mu$ on $\{0,1\}^n \times \{0,1\}^n$, we show that $${{CC}}^\mu_{0.49}(f) = O\left(\left(\log {{rprt}}_{1/4}(f) \cdot \log \log {{rprt}}_{1/4}(f)\right)^2\right),$$ where ${{CC}^\mu_\varepsilon(f)$ is the distributional communication complexity with error at most $\varepsilon$ under the distribution $\mu$ and ... more >>>

We consider the task of multiparty computation performed over networks in
the presence of random noise. Given an $n$-party protocol that takes $R$
rounds assuming noiseless communication, the goal is to find a coding
scheme that takes $R'$ rounds and computes the same function with high
probability even when the ... more >>>

Atserias, Kolaitis, and Vardi [AKV04] showed that the proof system of Ordered Binary Decision Diagrams with conjunction and weakening, OBDD($\land$, weakening), simulates CP* (Cutting Planes with unary coefficients). We show that OBDD($\land$, weakening) can give exponentially shorter proofs than dag-like cutting planes. This is proved by showing that the Clique-Coloring ... more >>>

We investigate the class of disjoint NP-pairs under different reductions.
The structure of this class is intimately linked to the simulation order
of propositional proof systems, and we make use of the relationship between
propositional proof systems and theories of bounded arithmetic as the main
tool of our analysis.
more >>>

A symmetric representation for a set of objects requires the same amount of space for the set as for its complement. Complexity classifications that are based on the length of the input can depend on whether the representation is symmetric. In this article we describe a symmetric representation scheme for ... more >>>

We introduce the notion of monotone linear programming circuits (MLP circuits), a model of
computation for partial Boolean functions. Using this model, we prove the following results:

1. MLP circuits are superpolynomially stronger than monotone Boolean circuits.
2. MLP circuits are exponentially stronger than monotone span programs.
3. ... more >>>

We give an answer to the question of Barrington, Beigel and Rudich, asked in 1992, concerning the largest n such that the OR function of n variable can be weakly represented by a quadratic polynomial modulo 6. More specially,we show that no 11-variable quadratic polynomial exists that is congruent to ... more >>>

A curious property of randomized log-space search algorithms is that their outputs are often longer than their workspace. This leads to the question: how can we reproduce the results of a randomized log space computation without storing the output or randomness verbatim? Running the algorithm again with new random bits ... more >>>

We introduce the notion of Resettable Zero-Knowledge (rZK),
a new security measure for cryptographic protocols
which strengthens the classical notion of zero-knowledge.
In essence, an rZK protocol is one that remains zero knowledge
even if an adeversary can interact with the prover many times, each
time ... more >>>

We define a collection of Prover-Delayer games that characterize certain subsystems of resolution. This allows us to give some natural criteria which guarantee lower bounds on the resolution width of a formula, and to extend these results to formulas of unbounded initial width.

We also use games to give upper ... more >>>

We investigate the size complexity of proofs in $RES(s)$ -- an extension of Resolution working on $s$-DNFs instead of clauses -- for families of contradictions given in the {\em unusual binary} encoding. A motivation of our work is size lower bounds of refutations in Resolution for families of contradictions in ... more >>>

The resolution complexity of the perfect matching principle was studied by Razborov [Raz04], who developed a technique for proving its lower bounds for dense graphs. We construct a constant degree bipartite graph $G_n$ such that the resolution complexity of the perfect matching principle for $G_n$ is $2^{\Omega(n)}$, where $n$ is ... more >>>

For any unsatisfiable CNF formula we give an exponential lower bound on the size of resolution refutations of a propositional statement that the formula has a resolution refutation. We describe three applications. (1) An open question in [Atserias-Müller,2019] asks whether a certain natural propositional encoding of the above statement is ... more >>>

We show that every resolution proof of the {\em functional} version
$FPHP^m_n$ of the pigeonhole principle (in which one pigeon may not split
between several holes) must have size $\exp\of{\Omega\of{\frac n{(\log
m)^2}}}$. This implies an $\exp\of{\Omega(n^{1/3})}$ bound when the number
of pigeons $m$ is arbitrary.

We prove that any Resolution proof for the weak
pigeon hole principle, with $n$ holes and any number of
pigeons, is of length $\Omega(2^{n^{\epsilon}})$,
(for some global constant $\epsilon > 0$).

We develop and study the complexity of propositional proof systems of varying strength extending resolution by allowing it to operate with disjunctions of linear equations instead of clauses. We demonstrate polynomial-size refutations for hard tautologies like the pigeonhole principle, Tseitin graph tautologies and the clique-coloring tautologies in these proof systems. ... more >>>

Resolution over linear equations (introduced in [RT08]) emerged recently as an important object of study. This refutation system, denoted Res(lin$_R$), operates with disjunction of linear equations over a ring $R$. On the one hand, the system captures a natural ``minimal'' extension of resolution in which efficient counting can be achieved; ... more >>>

We study online bounded space bin packing in the resource
augmentation model of competitive analysis.
In this model, the online bounded space packing algorithm has
to pack a list L of items in (0,1] into a small number of
bins of size b>=1.
Its performance is measured by comparing the ... more >>>

Revisiting the thirty years-old notions of resource-bounded immunity and simplicity, we investigate the structural characteristics of various immunity notions: strong immunity, almost immunity, and hyperimmunity as well as their corresponding simplicity notions. We also study limited immunity and simplicity, called k-immunity and feasible k-immunity, and their simplicity notions. Finally, we ... more >>>

We consider uniform assumptions for derandomization. We provide
intuitive evidence that BPP can be simulated non-trivially in
deterministic time by showing that (1) P \not \subseteq i.o.i.PLOYLOGSPACE
implies BPP \subseteq SUBEXP (2) P \not \subseteq SUBPSPACE implies BPP
= P. These results extend and complement earlier work of ... more >>>

We study common randomness where two parties have access to i.i.d. samples from a known random source, and wish to generate a shared random key using limited (or no) communication with the largest possible probability of agreement. This problem is at the core of secret key generation in cryptography, with ... more >>>

We prove that a random linear code over $\mathbb{F}_q$, with probability arbitrarily close to $1$, is list decodable at radius $1-1/q-\epsilon$ with list size $L=O(1/\epsilon^2)$ and rate $R=\Omega_q(\epsilon^2/(\log^3(1/\epsilon)))$. Up to the polylogarithmic factor in $1/\epsilon$ and constant factors depending on $q$, this matches the lower bound $L=\Omega_q(1/\epsilon^2)$ for the list ... more >>>

Branching programs are a well established computation model for
Boolean functions, especially read-once branching programs have
been studied intensively.
In this paper the expressive power of nondeterministic read-once
branching programs, i.e., the class of functions
representable in polynomial size, is investigated.
For that reason two restricted models of nondeterministic read-once
more >>>

The Graph Isomorphism problem restricted to graphs of bounded treewidth or bounded tree distance width
are known to be solvable in polynomial time \cite{Bo90},\cite{YBFT}.
We give restricted space algorithms for these problems proving the following results:

Isomorphism for bounded tree distance width graphs is in L and thus complete ... more >>>

We introduce a notion of non-black-box access to computational devices (such as circuits, formulas, decision trees, and so forth) that we call \emph{restriction access}. Restrictions are partial assignments to input variables. Each restriction simplifies the device, and yields a new device for the restricted function on the unassigned variables. On ... more >>>

In the world of space-bounded complexity, there is a strain of results showing that space can, somewhat paradoxically, be used for multiple purposes at once. Touchstone results include Barrington’s Theorem and the recent line of work on catalytic computing. We refer to such techniques, in contrast to the usual notion ... more >>>

Reverse mathematics is a program in mathematical logic that seeks to determine which axioms are necessary to prove a given theorem. In this work, we systematically explore the reverse mathematics of complexity lower bounds. We explore reversals in the setting of bounded arithmetic, with Cook's theory $\mathbf{PV}_1$ as the base ... more >>>

We show a new connection between the space measure in tree-like resolution and the reversible pebble game in graphs. Using this connection we provide several formula classes for which there is a logarithmic factor separation between the space complexity measure in tree-like and general resolution. We show that these separations ... more >>>

In this paper we review the known bounds for $L(n)$, the circuit size
complexity of the hardest Boolean function on $n$ input bits. The
best known bounds appear to be $$\frac{2^n}{n}(1+\frac{\log
n}{n}-O(\frac{1}{n})) \leq L(n) \leq\frac{2^n}{n}(1+3\frac{\log
n}{n}+O(\frac{1}{n}))$$ However, the bounds do not seem to be
explicitly stated in the literature. We ... more >>>

A recent work of Li and Wootters (2021) shows a redundancy lower bound of $\Omega(\sqrt{Nk})$ for systematic linear $k$-batch codes of block length $N$ by looking at the $O(k)$ tensor power of the dual code. In this note, we present an alternate proof of their result via a linear independence ... more >>>

Dinur's celebrated proof of the PCP theorem alternates two main steps in several iterations: gap amplification to increase the soundness gap by a large constant factor (at the expense of much larger alphabet size), and a composition step that brings back the alphabet size to an absolute constant (at the ... more >>>

So-called ordered variants of the classical notions of pathwidth and treewidth are introduced and proposed as proof theoretically meaningful complexity measures for the directed acyclic graphs underlying proofs. The ordered pathwidth of a proof is shown to be roughly the same as its formula space. Length-space lower bounds for R(k)-refutations ... more >>>

We study the black-box function inversion problem, which is the problem of finding $x \in [N]$ such that $f(x) = y$, given as input some challenge point $y$ in the image of a function $f : [N] \to [N]$, using $T$ oracle queries to $f$ and preprocessed advice $\sigma \in ... more >>>

We deal with the problem of a center sending a secret message to
a group of users such that some subset of the users is considered
revoked and should not be able to obtain the content of the
message. We concentrate on the stateless receiver case, where
the users do ... more >>>

We introduce a variant of PCPs, that we refer to as *rectangular* PCPs, wherein proofs are thought of as square matrices, and the random coins used by the verifier can be partitioned into two disjoint sets, one determining the *row* of each query and the other determining the *column*.

We ... more >>>

A temporal constraint language $\Gamma$ is a set of relations with first-order definitions in $({\mathbb{Q}}; <)$. Let CSP($\Gamma$) denote the set of constraint satisfaction problem instances with relations from $\Gamma$. CSP($\Gamma$) admits robust approximation if, for any $\varepsilon \geq 0$, given a $(1-\varepsilon)$-satisfiable instance of CSP($\Gamma$), we can compute an ... more >>>

Given two binary linear codes R and C, their tensor product R \otimes C consists of all matrices with rows in R and columns in C. We analyze the "robustness" of the following test for this code (suggested by Ben-Sasson and Sudan~\cite{BenSasson-Sudan04}): Pick a random row (or column) and check ... more >>>

We continue the investigation of locally testable codes, i.e.,
error-correcting codes for whom membership of a given word in the
code can be tested probabilistically by examining it in very few
locations. We give two general results on local testability:
First, motivated by the recently proposed notion of robust
probabilistically ... more >>>

We study the communication complexity of evaluating functions when the input data is randomly allocated (according to some known distribution) amongst two or more players, possibly with information overlap. This naturally extends previously studied variable partition models such as the best-case and worst-case partition models. We aim to understand whether ... more >>>

We consider the following multiplication-based tests to check if a given function $f: \mathbb{F}_q^n\to \mathbb{F}_q$ is the evaluation of a degree-$d$ polynomial over $\mathbb{F}_q$ for $q$ prime.

* $\mathrm{Test}_{e,k}$: Pick $P_1,\ldots,P_k$ independent random degree-$e$ polynomials and accept iff the function $fP_1\cdots P_k$ is the evaluation of a degree-$(d+ek)$ polynomial.

We continue the study of the trade-off between the length of PCPs
and their query complexity, establishing the following main results
(which refer to proofs of satisfiability of circuits of size $n$):
We present PCPs of length $\exp(\tildeO(\log\log n)^2)\cdot n$
that can be verified by making $o(\log\log n)$ Boolean queries.
more >>>

Let $G:\{0,1\}^n\to\{0,1\}^m$ be a pseudorandom generator. We say that a circuit implementation of $G$ is $(k,q)$-robust if for every set $S$ of at most $k$ wires anywhere in the circuit, there is a set $T$ of at most $q|S|$ outputs, such that conditioned on the values of $S$ and $T$ ... more >>>

We prove a robust generalization of a Sylvester-Gallai type theorem for quadratic polynomials, generalizing the result in [S'20].
More precisely, given a parameter $0 < \delta \leq 1$ and a finite collection $\mathcal{F}$ of irreducible and pairwise independent polynomials of degree at most 2, we say that $\mathcal{F}$ is a ... more >>>

An algorithm for a constraint satisfaction problem is called robust if it outputs an assignment satisfying at least $(1-g(\varepsilon))$-fraction of the constraints given a $(1-\varepsilon)$-satisfiable instance, where $g(\varepsilon) \rightarrow 0$ as $\varepsilon \rightarrow 0$, $g(0)=0$.
Guruswami and Zhou conjectured a characterization of constraint languages for which the corresponding constraint satisfaction ... more >>>

We study two notions that refers to asymmetric graphs, which we view as graphs having a unique ordering that can be reconstructed by looking at an unlabeled version of the graph.

A {\em local self-ordering} procedure for a graph $G$ is given oracle access to an arbitrary isomorphic copy of ... more >>>

The sensitivity conjecture is one of the central open problems in boolean complexity. A recent work of Gopalan et al. [CCC 2016] conjectured a robust analog of the sensitivity conjecture, which relates the decay of the Fourier mass of a boolean function to moments of its sensitivity. We prove this ... more >>>

A local tester for a code probabilistically looks at a given word at a small set of coordinates and based on this local view accepts codewords with probability one while rejecting words far from the code with constant probabilility. A local tester for a code is said to be ``robust'' ... more >>>

A natural problem in high-dimensional inference is to decide if a classifier $f:\mathbb{R}^n \rightarrow \{-1,1\}$ depends on a small number of linear directions of its input data. Call a function $g: \mathbb{R}^n \rightarrow \{-1,1\}$, a linear $k$-junta if it is completely determined by some $k$-dimensional subspace of the input space. ... more >>>

A graph $G$ is called {\em self-ordered}\/ (a.k.a asymmetric) if the identity permutation is its only automorphism.
Equivalently, there is a unique isomorphism from $G$ to any graph that is isomorphic to $G$.
We say that $G=(V,E)$ is {\em robustly self-ordered}\/ if the size of the symmetric difference ... more >>>

We establish an $\epsilon$-sensitive hierarchy separation for monotone arithmetic computations. The notion of $\epsilon$-sensitive monotone lower bounds was recently introduced by Hrubes [Computational Complexity'20]. We show the following:

(1) There exists a monotone polynomial over $n$ variables in VNP that cannot be computed by $2^{o(n)}$ size monotone ... more >>>

We show that the space-bounded Statistical Zero Knowledge classes SZK_L and NISZK_L are surprisingly robust, in that the power of the verifier and simulator can be strengthened or weakened without affecting the resulting class. Coupled with other recent characterizations of these classes, this can be viewed as lending support to ... more >>>

Consider an interactive proof system for some set S that has randomness complexity r(n) for instances of length n, and arbitrary round complexity. We show a public-coin interactive proof system for S of round complexity O(r(n)/log n). Furthermore, the randomness complexity is preserved up to a constant factor, and the ... more >>>

We explicitly show the upper bound on the round complexity for perfectly concealing bit commitment schemes based on the general computational assumption. The best known scheme in the literature is the one-way permutation based scheme due to Naor, Ostrovsky, Venkatesan and Yung and its round complexity is O(n). We consider ... more >>>

In a celebrated result from the $60$'s, Berlekamp showed that feedback can be used to increase the maximum fraction of adversarial noise that can be tolerated by binary error correcting codes from $1/4$ to $1/3$. However, his result relies on the assumption that feedback is "continuous", i.e., after every utilization ... more >>>

We show a new way to round vector solutions of semidefinite programming (SDP) hierarchies into integral solutions, based on a connection between these hierarchies and the spectrum of the input graph. We demonstrate the utility of our method by providing a new SDP-hierarchy based algorithm for constraint satisfaction problems with ... more >>>

We present a general approach to rounding semidefinite programming relaxations obtained by the Sum-of-Squares method (Lasserre hierarchy). Our approach is based on using the connection between these relaxations and the Sum-of-Squares proof system to transform a *combining algorithm* -- an algorithm that maps a distribution over solutions into a (possibly ... more >>>

We consider the problem of finding a maximal independent set (MIS) in the shared blackboard communication model with vertex-partitioned inputs. There are $n$ players corresponding to vertices of an undirected graph, and each player sees the edges incident on its vertex -- this way, each edge is known by both ... more >>>

We use recent results on the hardness of resource-bounded
Kolmogorov random strings, to prove that RP is small in SUBEXP
else ZPP=PSPACE and NP=EXP.
We also prove that if NP is not small in SUBEXP, then
NP=AM, improving a former result which held for the measure ... more >>>

If no optimal propositional proof system exists, we (and independently Pudlák) prove that ruling out length $t$ proofs of any unprovable sentence is hard. This mapping from unprovable to hard-to-prove sentences powerfully translates facts about noncomputability into complexity theory. For instance, because proving string $x$ is Kolmogorov random ($x{\in}R$) is ... more >>>

Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) has become quite popular in recent
years. In contrast to many successful applications, the theoretical
foundation of this randomized search heuristic is rather weak.
Building up such a theory is demanded to understand how these
heuristics work as well as to ... more >>>