In this paper we compare two proof systems for minimal entailment: a tableau system OTAB and a sequent calculus MLK, both developed by Olivetti (J. Autom. Reasoning, 1992). Our main result shows that OTAB-proofs can be efficiently translated into MLK-proofs, i.e., MLK p-simulates OTAB. The simulation is technically very involved ... more >>>

We consider tautologies formed from a pseudo-random
number generator, defined in Kraj\'{\i}\v{c}ek \cite{Kra99}
and in Alekhnovich et.al. \cite{ABRW}.
We explain a strategy of proving their hardness for EF via
a conjecture about bounded arithmetic formulated
in Kraj\'{\i}\v{c}ek \cite{Kra99}. Further we give a
purely finitary statement, in a ... more >>>

In this work we study the quantitative relation between VC-dimension and two other basic parameters related to learning and teaching. We present relatively efficient constructions of {\em sample compression schemes} and
for classes of low VC-dimension. Let $C$ be a finite boolean concept class of VC-dimension $d$. Set $k ... more >>>

We continue the study of {\em robust} tensor codes and expand the
class of base codes that can be used as a starting point for the
construction of locally testable codes via robust two-wise tensor
products. In particular, we show that all unique-neighbor expander
codes and all locally correctable codes, ... more >>>

In this paper we study quantum nondeterminism in multiparty communication. There are three (possibly) different types of nondeterminism in quantum computation: i) strong, ii) weak with classical proofs, and iii) weak with quantum proofs. Here we focus on the first one. A strong quantum nondeterministic protocol accepts a correct input ... more >>>

We prove that approximating the rank of a 3-tensor to within a factor of $1 + 1/1852 - \delta$, for any $\delta > 0$, is NP-hard over any finite field. We do this via reduction from bounded occurrence 2-SAT.

The results of Strassen and Raz show that good enough tensor rank lower bounds have implications for algebraic circuit/formula lower bounds.

We explore tensor rank lower and upper bounds, focusing on explicit tensors. For odd d, we construct field-independent explicit 0/1 tensors T:[n]^d->F with rank at least 2n^(floor(d/2))+n-Theta(d log n). ... more >>>

We give reconstruction algorithms for subclasses of depth-$3$ arithmetic circuits. In particular, we obtain the first efficient algorithm for finding tensor rank, and an optimal tensor decomposition as a sum of rank-one tensors, when given black-box access to a tensor of super-constant rank. Specifically, we obtain the following results:

1. ... more >>>

We show that any explicit example for a tensor $A:[n]^r \rightarrow \mathbb{F}$ with tensor-rank
$\geq n^{r \cdot (1- o(1))}$,
(where $r = r(n) \leq \log n / \log \log n$), implies an explicit super-polynomial lower bound for the size of general arithmetic formulas over $\mathbb{F}$. This shows that strong enough ... more >>>

We develop a new notion called {\it tester of a class $\cM$ of
functions} $f:\cA\to \cC$ that maps the elements $\bfa\in \cA$ in
the domain $\cA$ of the function to a finite number (the size of
the tester) of elements $\bfb_1,\ldots,\bfb_t$ in a smaller
sub-domain $\cB\subset \cA$ where the property ... more >>>

A function $f : D \to R$ has Lipschitz constant $c$ if $d_R(f(x),f(y)) \leq c\cdot d_D(x,y)$ for all $x,y$ in $D$, where $d_R$ and $d_D$ denote the distance functions on the range and domain of $f$, respectively. We say a function is Lipschitz if it has Lipschitz constant 1. (Note ... more >>>

We study the testing problem, that is, the problem of determining (maybe
probabilistically) if a function to which we have oracle access
satisfies a given property.

We propose a framework in which to formulate and carry out the analyzes
of several known tests. This framework establishes a connection between
more >>>

Given an instance $\mathcal{I}$ of a CSP, a tester for $\mathcal{I}$ distinguishes assignments satisfying $\mathcal{I}$ from those which are far from any assignment satisfying $\mathcal{I}$. The efficiency of a tester is measured by its query complexity, the number of variable assignments queried by the algorithm. In this paper, we characterize ... more >>>

Let $f:\{-1,1\}^n \to \mathbb{R}$ be a real function on the hypercube, given
by its discrete Fourier expansion, or, equivalently, represented as
a multilinear polynomial. We say that it is Boolean if its image is
in $\{-1,1\}$.

We show that every function on the hypercube with a ... more >>>

Property testing is concerned with deciding whether an object
(e.g. a graph or a function) has a certain property or is ``far''
(for a prespecified distance measure) from every object with
that property. In this work we consider the property of being
computable by a read-once ... more >>>

In this paper, we study the problem of testing the conductance of a
given graph in the general graph model. Given distance parameter
$\varepsilon$ and any constant $\sigma>0$, there exists a tester
whose running time is $\mathcal{O}(\frac{m^{(1+\sigma)/2}\cdot\log
n\cdot\log\frac{1}{\varepsilon}}{\varepsilon\cdot\Phi^2})$, where
$n$ is the number of vertices and $m$ is the number ... more >>>

A coloring of a graph is {\it convex} if it
induces a partition of the vertices into connected subgraphs.
Besides being an interesting property from a theoretical point of
view, tests for convexity have applications in various areas
involving large graphs. Our results concern the important subcase
of testing for ... more >>>

Motivated by the question of data quantization and "binning," we revisit the problem of identity testing of discrete probability distributions. Identity testing (a.k.a. one-sample testing), a fundamental and by now well-understood problem in distribution testing, asks, given a reference distribution (model) $\mathbf{q}$ and samples from an unknown distribution $\mathbf{p}$, both ... more >>>

We initiate a study of a new model of property testing that is a hybrid of testing properties of distributions and testing properties of strings.
Specifically, the new model refers to testing properties of distributions, but these are distributions over huge objects (i.e., very long strings).
Accordingly, the ... more >>>

Let $G=(V,E)$ be a connected undirected graph with $k$ vertices. Suppose
that on each vertex of the graph there is a player having an $n$-bit
string. Each player is allowed to communicate with its neighbors according
to an agreed communication protocol, and the players must decide,
deterministically, if their inputs ... more >>>

Two polynomials $f, g \in F[x_1, \ldots, x_n]$ are called shift-equivalent if there exists a vector $(a_1, \ldots, a_n) \in {F}^n$ such that the polynomial identity $f(x_1+a_1, \ldots, x_n+a_n) \equiv g(x_1,\ldots,x_n)$ holds. Our main result is a new randomized algorithm that tests whether two given polynomials are shift equivalent. Our ... more >>>

An $n$-variate polynomial $g$ of degree $d$ is a $(n,d,t)$ design polynomial if the degree of the gcd of every pair of monomials of $g$ is at most $t-1$. The power symmetric polynomial $\mathrm{PSym}_{n,d} := \sum_{i=1}^{n} x^d_i$ and the sum-product polynomial $\mathrm{SP}_{s,d} := \sum_{i=1}^{s}\prod_{j=1}^{d} x_{i,j}$ are instances of design polynomials ... more >>>

We consider the problem of testing graph expansion in the bounded degree model. We give a property tester that given a graph with degree bound $d$, an expansion bound $\alpha$, and a parameter $\epsilon > 0$, accepts the graph with high probability if its expansion is more than $\alpha$, and ... more >>>

We describe a general method for testing whether a function on n input variables has a concise representation. The approach combines ideas from the junta test of Fischer et al. with ideas from learning theory, and yields property testers that make poly(s/epsilon) queries (independent of n) for Boolean function classes ... more >>>

The area of graph property testing seeks to understand the relation between the global properties of a graph and its local statistics. In the classical model, the local statistics of a graph is defined relative to a uniform distribution over the graph’s vertex set. A graph property $\mathcal{P}$ is said ... more >>>

Let $P$ be a property of graphs. An $\epsilon$-test for $P$ is a
randomized algorithm which, given the ability to make queries whether
a desired pair of vertices of an input graph $G$ with $n$ vertices are
adjacent or not, distinguishes, with high probability, between the
case of $G$ satisfying ... more >>>

Prior studies of testing graph properties presume that the tester can obtain uniformly distributed vertices in the tested graph (in addition to obtaining answers to the some type of graph-queries).
Here we envision settings in which it is only feasible to obtain random vertices drawn according to an arbitrary distribution ... more >>>

This paper addresses the problem of testing whether a Boolean-valued function f is a halfspace, i.e. a function of the form f(x)=sgn(w ⋅ x - θ). We consider halfspaces over the continuous domain R^n (endowed with the standard multivariate Gaussian distribution) as well as halfspaces over the Boolean cube {-1,1}^n ... more >>>

We study property testing in the model of bounded degree graphs. It
is well known that in this model many graph properties cannot be
tested with a constant number of queries and it seems reasonable to
conjecture that only few are testable with o(sqrt{n}) queries.
Therefore in this paper ... more >>>

We consider properties of edge-colored vertex-ordered graphs, i.e., graphs with a totally ordered vertex set and a finite set of possible edge colors. We show that any hereditary property of such graphs is strongly testable, i.e., testable with a constant number of queries.
We also explain how the proof can ... more >>>

Considering the bounded-degree graph model, we show that if the degree bound is two,
then every graph property can be tested within query complexity that only depends on the proximity parameter.
Specifically, the query complexity is ${\rm poly}(1/\epsilon)$, where $\epsilon$ denotes the proximity parameter.
The key observation is that a ... more >>>

Given samples from an unknown multivariate distribution $p$, is it possible to distinguish whether $p$ is the product of its marginals versus $p$ being far from every product distribution? Similarly, is it possible to distinguish whether $p$ equals a given distribution $q$ versus $p$ and $q$ being far from each ... more >>>

We consider two versions of the problem of testing graph isomorphism in the bounded-degree graph model: A version in which one graph is fixed, and a version in which the input consists of two graphs.
We essentially determine the query complexity of these testing problems in the special case of ... more >>>

A Boolean $k$-monotone function defined over a finite poset domain ${\cal D}$ alternates between the values $0$ and $1$ at most $k$ times on any ascending chain in ${\cal D}$. Therefore, $k$-monotone functions are natural generalizations of the classical monotone functions, which are the $1$-monotone functions.

Motivated by the ... more >>>

Property testers are fast randomized algorithms whose task is to distinguish between inputs satisfying some predetermined property ${\cal P}$ and those that are far from satisfying it. Since these algorithms operate by inspecting a small randomly selected portion of the input, the most natural property one would like to be ... more >>>

The last two decades have seen enormous progress in the development of sublinear-time algorithms --- i.e., algorithms that examine/reveal properties of ``data'' in less time than it would take to read all of the data. A large, and important, subclass of such properties turn out to be ``linear''. In particular, ... more >>>

We consider the task of testing properties of Boolean functions that
are invariant under linear transformations of the Boolean cube. Previous
work in property testing, including the linearity test and the test
for Reed-Muller codes, has mostly focused on such tasks for linear
properties. The one exception is a test ... more >>>

The rich collection of successes in property testing raises a natural question: Why are so many different properties turning out to be locally testable? Are there some broad "features" of properties that make them testable? Kaufman and Sudan (STOC 2008) proposed the study of the relationship between the invariances satisfied ... more >>>

Non-signaling strategies are collections of distributions with certain non-local correlations. They have been studied in Physics as a strict generalization of quantum strategies to understand the power and limitations of Nature's apparent non-locality. Recently, they have received attention in Theoretical Computer Science due to connections to Complexity and Cryptography.

We ... more >>>

A function $f(x_1, ... , x_d)$, where each input is an integer from 1 to $n$ and output is a real number, is Lipschitz if changing one of the inputs by 1 changes the output by at most 1. In other words, Lipschitz functions are not very sensitive to small ... more >>>

We study testing of local properties in one-dimensional and multi-dimensional arrays. A property of $d$-dimensional arrays $f:[n]^d \to \Sigma$ is $k$-local if it can be defined by a family of $k \times \ldots \times k$ forbidden consecutive patterns. This definition captures numerous interesting properties. For example, monotonicity, Lipschitz continuity and ... more >>>

Invariance with respect to linear or affine transformations of the domain is arguably the most common symmetry exhibited by natural algebraic properties. In this work, we show that any low complexity affine-invariant property of multivariate functions over finite fields is testable with a constant number of queries. This immediately reproves, ... more >>>

We investigate the number of samples required for testing the monotonicity of a distribution with respect to an arbitrary underlying partially ordered set. Our first result is a nearly linear lower bound for the sample complexity of testing monotonicity with respect to the poset consisting of a directed perfect matching. ... more >>>

In this work, using methods from high dimensional expansion, we show that the property of $k$-direct-sum is testable for odd values of $k$ . Previous work of Kaufman and Lubotzky could inherently deal only with the case that $k$ is even, using a reduction to linearity testing.
Interestingly, our work ... more >>>

Call a function $f: \mathbb{F}_2^n \to \{0,1\}$ odd-cycle-free if there are no $x_1, \dots, x_k \in \mathbb{F}_2^n$ with $k$ an odd integer such that $f(x_1) = \cdots = f(x_k) = 1$ and $x_1 + \cdots + x_k = 0$. We show that one can distinguish odd-cycle-free functions from those $\epsilon$-far ... more >>>

In this work we consider linear codes which are locally testable
in a sublinear number of queries. We give the first general family
of locally testable codes of exponential size. Previous results of
this form were known only for codes of quasi-polynomial size (e.g.
Reed-Muller codes). We accomplish this by ... more >>>

The study of distribution testing has become ubiquitous in the area of property testing, both for its theoretical appeal, as well as for its applications in other fields of Computer Science, and in various real-life statistical tasks.

The original distribution testing model relies on samples drawn independently from the distribution ... more >>>

We propose a new model for studying graph related problems
that we call the \emph{orientation model}. In this model, an undirected
graph $G$ is fixed, and the input is any possible edge orientation
of $G$. A property is now a property of the directed graph that is
obtained by a ... more >>>

A string $\alpha\in\Sigma^n$ is called {\it p-periodic},
if for every $i,j \in \{1,\dots,n\}$, such that $i\equiv j \bmod p$,
$\alpha_i = \alpha_{j}$, where $\alpha_i$ is the $i$-th place of $\alpha$.
A string $\alpha\in\Sigma^n$ is said to be $period(\leq g)$,
if there exists $p\in \{1,\dots,g\}$ such that $\alpha$ ... more >>>

Suppose we are given an oracle that claims to approximate the permanent for most matrices $X$, where $X$ is chosen from the Gaussian ensemble (the matrix entries are i.i.d. univariate complex Gaussians). Can we test that the oracle satisfies this claim? This paper gives a polynomial-time algorithm for the task.

In this paper, we analyze and study a hybrid model for testing and learning probability distributions. Here, in addition to samples, the testing algorithm is provided with one of two different types of oracles to the unknown distribution $D$ over $[n]$. More precisely, we define both the dual and extended ... more >>>

We study a new framework for property testing of probability distributions, by considering distribution testing algorithms that have access to a conditional sampling oracle. \footnote{Independently from our work, Chakraborty et al. [CFGM13] also considered this framework. We discuss their work in Subsection 1.4.} This is an oracle that takes as ... more >>>

We propose a framework for studying property testing of collections of distributions,
where the number of distributions in the collection is a parameter of the problem.
Previous work on property testing of distributions considered
single distributions or pairs of distributions. We suggest two models that differ
in the way the ... more >>>

We study a model of graph related formulae that we call
the \emph{Constraint-Graph model}. A
constraint-graph is a labeled multi-graph (a graph where loops
and parallel edges are allowed), where each edge $e$ is labeled
by a distinct Boolean variable and every vertex is
associate with a Boolean function over ... more >>>

We consider the problem of testing a basic property of collections of distributions: having similar means. Namely, the algorithm should accept collections of distributions in which all distributions have means that do not differ by more than some given parameter, and should reject collections that are relatively far from having ... more >>>

We introduce the notion of a Canonical Tester for a class of properties, that is, a tester strong and
general enough that ``a property is testable if and only if the
Canonical Tester tests it''. We construct a Canonical Tester
for the class of symmetric properties of one or two
more >>>

We study the problem of testing the expansion of
graphs with bounded degree d in sublinear time. A graph is said to
be an \alpha-expander if every vertex set U \subset V of size at
most |V|/2 has a neighborhood of size at least \alpha|U|.

We show that the algorithm ... more >>>

A $k$-uniform hypergraph $G$ of size $n$ is said to be $\varepsilon$-far from having an independent set of size $\rho n$ if one must remove at least $\varepsilon n^k$ edges of $G$ in order for the remaining hypergraph to have an independent set of size $\rho n$. In this work, ... more >>>

Connections between proof complexity and circuit complexity have become major tools for obtaining lower bounds in both areas. These connections -- which take the form of interpolation theorems and query-to-communication lifting theorems -- translate efficient proofs into small circuits, and vice versa, allowing tools from one area to be applied ... more >>>

We show that, in the black-box setting, the behavior of quantum polynomial-time (${BQP}$) can be remarkably decoupled from that of classical complexity classes like ${NP}$. Specifically:

-There exists an oracle relative to which ${NP}^{{BQP}}\not \subset {BQP}^{{PH}}$, resolving a 2005 problem of Fortnow. Interpreted another way, we show that ${AC^0}$ circuits ... more >>>

We put forth several simple candidate pseudorandom functions f_k : {0,1}^n -> {0,1} with security (a.k.a. hardness) 2^n that are inspired by the AES block-cipher by Daemen and Rijmen (2000). The functions are computable more efficiently, and use a shorter key (a.k.a. seed) than previous
constructions. In particular, we ... more >>>

The Parikh automaton model equips a finite automaton with integer registers and imposes a semilinear constraint on the set of their final settings. Here the theory of typed monoids is used to characterize the language classes that arise algebraically. Complexity bounds are derived, such as containment of the unambiguous Parikh ... more >>>

We prove hardness results for approximating set splitting problems and
also instances of satisfiability problems which have no ``mixed'' clauses,
i.e all clauses have either all their literals unnegated or all of them
negated. Recent results of Hastad imply tight hardness results for set
splitting when all sets ... more >>>

The approximate degree of a Boolean function $f\colon\{0,1\}^n\to\{0,1\}$ is the minimum degree of a real polynomial $p$ that approximates $f$ pointwise: $|f(x)-p(x)|\leq1/3$ for all $x\in\{0,1\}^n.$ For every $\delta>0,$ we construct CNF and DNF formulas of polynomial size with approximate degree $\Omega(n^{1-\delta}),$ essentially matching the trivial upper bound of $n.$ This ... more >>>

We introduce and study the \epsilon-rank of a real matrix A, defi ned, for any  \epsilon > 0 as the minimum rank over matrices that approximate every entry of A to within an additive \epsilon. This parameter is connected to other notions of approximate rank and is motivated by ... more >>>

Constructive dimension and constructive strong dimension are effectivizations of the Hausdorff and packing dimensions, respectively. Each infinite binary sequence A is assigned a dimension dim(A) in [0,1] and a strong dimension Dim(A) in [0,1].

Let DIM^alpha and DIMstr^alpha be the classes of all sequences of dimension alpha and of strong ... more >>>

We show that unbounded fan-in boolean formulas of depth $d+1$ and size $s$ have average sensitivity $O(\frac{1}{d}\log s)^d$. In particular, this gives a tight $2^{\Omega(d(n^{1/d}-1))}$ lower bound on the size of depth $d+1$ formulas computing the PARITY function. These results strengthen the corresponding $2^{\Omega(n^{1/d})}$ and $O(\log s)^d$ bounds for circuits ... more >>>

A bipartite formula on binary variables $x_1, \ldots, x_n$ and $y_1, \ldots, y_n$ is a binary tree whose internal nodes are marked with AND or OR gates and whose leaves may compute any function of either the $x$ or $y$ variables. We show that any bipartite formula for the Inner-Product ... more >>>

For any given Boolean formula $\phi(x_1,\dots,x_n)$, one can
efficiently construct (using \emph{arithmetization}) a low-degree
polynomial $p(x_1,\dots,x_n)$ that agrees with $\phi$ over all
points in the Boolean cube $\{0,1\}^n$; the constructed polynomial
$p$ can be interpreted as a polynomial over an arbitrary field
$\mathbb{F}$. The problem ... more >>>

We investigate the computational complexity of the Boolean Isomorphism problem (BI):
on input of two Boolean formulas F and G decide whether there exists a permutation of
the variables of G such that F and G become equivalent.

Our main result is a one-round interactive proof ... more >>>

The Busy Beaver function, with its incomprehensibly rapid growth, has captivated generations of computer scientists, mathematicians, and hobbyists. In this survey, I offer a personal view of the BB function 58 years after its introduction, emphasizing lesser-known insights, recent progress, and especially favorite open problems. Examples of such problems include: ... more >>>

Agrawal and Vinay [AV08] showed how any polynomial size arithmetic circuit can be thought of as a depth four arithmetic circuit of subexponential size. The resulting circuit size in this simulation was more carefully analyzed by Korian [Koiran] and subsequently by Tavenas [Tav13]. We provide a simple proof of this ... more >>>

The direct-sum question is a classical question that asks whether
performing a task on $m$ independent inputs is $m$ times harder
than performing it on a single input. In order to study this question,
Beimel et. al (Computational Complexity 23(1), 2014) introduced the following related problems:

* The choice ... more >>>

We present a complete classification of all possible sets of classical reversible gates acting on bits, in terms of which reversible transformations they generate, assuming swaps and ancilla bits are available for free. Our classification can be seen as the reversible-computing analogue of Post's lattice, a central result in mathematical ... more >>>

Let $X_{m, \eps}$ be the distribution over $m$ bits $(X_1, \ldots, X_m)$
where the $X_i$ are independent and each $X_i$ equals $1$ with
probability $(1+\eps)/2$ and $0$ with probability $(1-\eps)/2$. We
consider the smallest value $\eps^*$ of $\eps$ such that the distributions
$X_{m,\eps}$ and $X_{m,0}$ can be distinguished with constant
more >>>

The $\delta$-Coin Problem is the computational problem of distinguishing between coins that are heads with probability $(1+\delta)/2$ or $(1-\delta)/2,$ where $\delta$ is a parameter that is going to $0$. We study the complexity of this problem in the model of constant-depth Boolean circuits and prove the following results.

1. Upper ... more >>>

Consider the problem of computing the majority of a stream of $n$ i.i.d. uniformly random bits. This problem, known as the {\it coin problem}, is central to a number of counting problems in different data stream models. We show that any streaming algorithm for solving this problem with large constant ... more >>>

Suppose each of $k \le n^{o(1)}$ players holds an $n$-bit number $x_i$ in its hand. The players wish to determine if $\sum_{i \le k} x_i = s$. We give a public-coin protocol with error $1\%$ and communication $O(k \lg k)$. The communication bound is independent of $n$, and for $k ... more >>>

We fully determine the communication complexity of approximating matrix rank, over any finite field $\mathbb{F}$. We study the most general version of this problem, where $0\leq r < R\leq n$ are given integers, Alice and Bob's inputs are matrices $A,B\in\mathbb{F}^{n\times n}$, respectively, and they need to distinguish between the cases ... more >>>

We examine the communication required for generating random variables
remotely. One party Alice will be given a distribution D, and she
has to send a message to Bob, who is then required to generate a
value with distribution exactly D. Alice and Bob are allowed
to share random bits generated ... more >>>

Normally, communication Complexity deals with how many bits
Alice and Bob need to exchange to compute f(x,y)
(Alice has x, Bob has y). We look at what happens if
Alice has x_1,x_2,...,x_n and Bob has y_1,...,y_n
and they want to compute f(x_1,y_1)... f(x_n,y_n).
THis seems hard. We look at various ... more >>>

We study the two-party communication complexity of functions with large outputs, and show that the communication complexity can greatly vary depending on what output model is considered. We study a variety of output models, ranging from the open model, in which an external observer can compute the outcome, to the ... more >>>

In the gap Hamming distance problem, two parties must
determine whether their respective strings $x,y\in\{0,1\}^n$
are at Hamming distance less than $n/2-\sqrt n$ or greater
than $n/2+\sqrt n.$ In a recent tour de force, Chakrabarti and
Regev (STOC '11) proved the long-conjectured $\Omega(n)$ bound
on the randomized communication ... more >>>

Alice receives a tuple $(a_1,\ldots,a_t)$ of $t$ elements
from the group $G = \text{SL}(2,q)$. Bob similarly
receives a tuple $(b_1,\ldots,b_t)$. They are promised
that the interleaved product $\prod_{i \le t} a_i b_i$
equals to either $g$ and $h$, for two fixed elements $g,h
\in G$. Their task is to decide ... more >>>

Set disjointness is one of the most fundamental problems in communication complexity. In the multi-party number-in-hand version of set disjointness, $k$ players receive private inputs $X_1,\ldots,X_k\subseteq \{1,\ldots,n\}$, and their goal is to determine whether or not $\bigcap_{i = 1}^k X_i = \emptyset$. In this paper we prove a tight lower ... more >>>

Private Simultaneous Message (PSM) protocols were introduced by Feige, Kilian and Naor (STOC '94) as a minimal non-interactive model for information-theoretic three-party secure computation. While it is known that every function $f:\{0,1\}^k\times \{0,1\}^k \rightarrow \{0,1\}$ admits a PSM protocol with exponential communication of $2^{k/2}$ (Beimel et al., TCC '14), the ... more >>>

We prove a sharp lower bound on the distributional communication complexity of the exact gap-hamming problem.

We study the complexity of approximation on satisfiable instances for graph homomorphism problems. For a fixed graph $H$, the $H$-colouring problem is to decide whether a given graph has a homomorphism to $H$. By a result of Hell and Nešet?il, this problem is NP-hard for any non-bipartite graph $H$. In ... more >>>

A celebrated 1976 theorem of Aumann asserts that honest, rational
Bayesian agents with common priors will never "agree to disagree": if
their opinions about any topic are common knowledge, then those
opinions must be equal. Economists have written numerous papers
examining the assumptions behind this theorem. But two key questions
more >>>

Statistics of small subgraph counts such as triangles, four-cycles, and $s$-$t$ paths of short lengths reveal important structural properties of the underlying graph. These problems have been widely studied in social network analysis. In most relevant applications, the graphs are not only massive but also change dynamically over time. Most ... more >>>

We resolve the question of the complexity of Nash equilibrium by
showing that the problem of computing a Nash equilibrium in a game
with 4 or more players is complete for the complexity class PPAD.
Our proof uses ideas from the recently-established equivalence
between polynomial-time solvability of normal-form games and
more >>>

We consider the problems of finding the lexicographically
minimal (or maximal) satisfying assignment of propositional
formulae for different restricted formula classes. It turns
out that for each class from our framework, the above problem
is either polynomial time solvable or complete for ... more >>>

Valiant (SIAM Journal on Computing 8, pages 410--421) showed that the
roblem of counting the number of s-t paths in graphs (both in the case
of directed graphs and in the case of undirected graphs) is complete
for #P under polynomial-time one-Turing reductions (namely, some
post-computation is needed to ... more >>>

We study interval-valued constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs),
in which the aim is to find an assignment of intervals to a given set of
variables subject to constraints on the relative positions of intervals.
Many well-known problems such as Interval Graph Recognition
and Interval Satisfiability can be considered as examples of ... more >>>

We study the complexity of building
pseudorandom generators (PRGs) from hard functions.

We show that, starting from a function f : {0,1}^l -> {0,1} that
is mildly hard on average, i.e. every circuit of size 2^Omega(l)
fails to compute f on at least a 1/poly(l)
fraction of inputs, we can ... more >>>

We study probabilistic debate checking, where a silent resource-bounded verifier reads a dialogue about the membership of a given string in the language under consideration between a prover and a refuter. We consider debates of partial and zero information, where the prover is prevented from seeing some or all of ... more >>>

We study the complexity of the following algorithmic problem: Given a Boolean function $f$ and a finite set of Boolean functions $B$, decide if there is a circuit with basis $B$ that computes $f$. We show that if both $f$ and all functions in $B$ are given by their truth-table, ... more >>>

We consider the problems of deciding whether the joint distribution sampled by a given circuit satisfies certain statistical properties such as being i.i.d., being exchangeable, being pairwise independent, having two coordinates with identical marginals, having two uncorrelated coordinates, and many other variants. We give a proof that simultaneously shows all ... more >>>

We give tight lower bounds for the size of depth-3 circuits with limited bottom fanin computing symmetric Boolean functions. We show that any depth-3 circuit with bottom fanin $k$ which computes the Boolean function $EXACT_{n/(k+1)}^{n}$, has at least $(1+1/k)^{n+\O(\log n)}$ gates. We show that this lower bound is tight, by ... more >>>

We study depth 3 circuits of the form $\mathrm{OR} \circ \mathrm{AND} \circ \mathrm{XOR}$, or equivalently -- DNF of parities. This model was first explicitly studied by Jukna (CPC'06) who obtained a $2^{\Omega(n)}$ lower bound for explicit functions. Several related models have gained attention in the last few years, such as ... more >>>

Goldreich, Sahai, and Vadhan (CRYPTO 1999) proved that the promise problem for estimating the Shannon entropy of a distribution sampled by a given circuit is NISZK-complete. We consider the analogous problem for estimating the min-entropy and prove that it is SBP-complete, even when restricted to 3-local samplers. For logarithmic-space samplers, ... more >>>

We prove almost tight hardness results for finding independent sets in bounded degree graphs and hypergraphs that admit a good
coloring. Our specific results include the following (where $\Delta$, assumed to be a constant, is a bound on the degree, and
$n$ is the number of vertices):

A graph $G$ has an \emph{$S$-factor} if there exists a spanning subgraph $F$ of $G$ such that for all $v \in V: \deg_F(v) \in S$.
The simplest example of such factor is a $1$-factor, which corresponds to a perfect matching in a graph. In this paper we study the computational ... more >>>

Consider a weather forecaster predicting a probability of rain for
the next day. We consider tests that given a finite sequence of
forecast predictions and outcomes will either pass or fail the
forecaster. Sandroni (2003) shows that any test which passes a
forecaster who knows the distribution of nature, can ... more >>>

In a seminal paper from 1985, Sistla and Clarke showed
that satisfiability for Linear Temporal Logic (LTL) is either
NP-complete or PSPACE-complete, depending on the set of temporal
operators used

If, in contrast, the set of propositional operators is restricted, the
complexity may ... more >>>

We study the complexity of Geometric Graph Isomorphism, in
$l_2$ and other $l_p$ metrics: given two sets of $n$ points $A,
B\subset \mathbb{Q}^k$ in
$k$-dimensional euclidean space the problem is to
decide if there is a bijection $\pi:A \rightarrow B$ such that for
... more >>>

The problem of determining whether several finite automata accept a word in common is closely related to the well-studied membership problem in transformation monoids. We raise the issue of limiting the number of final states in the automata intersection problem. For automata with two final states, we show the problem ... more >>>

Higman showed that if A is *any* language then SUBSEQ(A)
is regular, where SUBSEQ(A) is the language of all
subsequences of strings in A. (The result we attribute
to Higman is actually an easy consequence of his work.)
Let s_1, s_2, s_3, ... more >>>

We study the complexity of locally list-decoding binary error correcting codes with good parameters (that are polynomially related to information theoretic bounds). We show that computing majority over $\Theta(1/\eps)$ bits is essentially equivalent to locally list-decoding binary codes from relative distance $1/2-\eps$ with list size $\poly(1/\eps)$. That is, a local-decoder ... more >>>

We characterize the complexity of some natural and important
problems in linear algebra. In particular, we identify natural
complexity classes for which the problems of (a) determining if a
system of linear equations is feasible and (b) computing the rank of
an integer matrix, ... more >>>

We study the complexity of finding the values and optimal strategies of
MEAN PAYOFF GAMES on graphs, a family of perfect information games
introduced by Ehrenfeucht and Mycielski and considered by Gurvich,
Karzanov and Khachiyan. We describe a pseudo-polynomial time algorithm
for the solution of such games, the decision ... more >>>

A dichotomy theorem for a class of decision problems is
a result asserting that certain problems in the class
are solvable in polynomial time, while the rest are NP-complete.
The first remarkable such dichotomy theorem was proved by
T.J. Schaefer in 1978. It concerns the ... more >>>

Free Binary Decision Diagrams (FBDDs) are a data structure
for the representation and manipulation of Boolean functions.
Efficient algorithms for most of the important operations are known if
only FBDDs respecting a fixed graph ordering are considered. However,
the size of such an FBDD may strongly depend on the chosen ... more >>>

The complexity class PPAD is usually defined in terms of the END-OF-LINE problem, in which we are given a concise representation of a large directed graph having indegree and outdegree at most 1, and a known source, and we seek some other degree-1 vertex. We show that variants where we ... more >>>

Suppose you want to store a large file on a remote and unreliable server. You would like to verify that your file has not been corrupted, so you store a small private (randomized)``fingerprint'' of the file on your own computer. This is the setting for the well-studied authentication problem, and ... more >>>

In this paper we will look at restricted versions of the evaluation problem, the model checking problem, the equivalence problem, and the counting problem for quantified propositional formulas, both with and without bound on the number of quantifier alternations. The restrictions are such that we consider formulas in conjunctive normal-form ... more >>>

We say that a graph with $n$ vertices is $c$-Ramsey if it does not contain either a clique or an independent set of size $c \log n$. We define a CNF formula which expresses this property for a graph $G$. We show a superpolynomial lower bound on the length of ... more >>>

We survey the computational foundations for public-key cryptography. We discuss the computational assumptions that have been used as bases for public-key encryption schemes, and the types of evidence we have for the veracity of these assumptions.

This is a survey that appeared in a book of surveys in honor of ... more >>>

This mini-course will introduce participants to an exciting frontier for quantum computing theory: namely, questions involving the computational complexity of preparing a certain quantum state or applying a certain unitary transformation. Traditionally, such questions were considered in the context of the Nonabelian Hidden Subgroup Problem and quantum interactive proof systems, ... more >>>

Given a set of observed economic choices, can one infer
preferences and/or utility functions for the players that are
consistent with the data? Questions of this type are called {\em
rationalization} or {\em revealed preference} problems in the
economic literature, and are the subject of a rich body of work.

We study the complexity of {\em rationalizing} network formation. In
this problem we fix an underlying model describing how selfish
parties (the vertices) produce a graph by making individual
decisions to form or not form incident edges. The model is equipped
with a notion of stability (or equilibrium), and we ... more >>>

Schaefer proved in 1978 that the Boolean constraint satisfaction problem for a given constraint language is either in P or is NP-complete, and identified all tractable cases. Schaefer's dichotomy theorem actually shows that there are at most two constraint satisfaction problems, up to polynomial-time isomorphism (and these isomorphism types are ... more >>>

Instances of optimization problems with multiple objectives can have several optimal solutions whose cost vectors are incomparable. This ambiguity leads to several reasonable notions for solving multiobjective problems. Each such notion defines a class of multivalued functions. We systematically investigate the computational complexity of these classes.

Some solution notions S ... more >>>

A boolean predicate $f:\{0,1\}^k\to\{0,1\}$ is said to be {\em somewhat approximation resistant} if for some constant $\tau > \frac{|f^{-1}(1)|}{2^k}$, given a $\tau$-satisfiable instance of the MAX-$k$-CSP$(f)$ problem, it is NP-hard to find an assignment that {\it strictly beats} the naive algorithm that outputs a uniformly random assignment. Let $\tau(f)$ denote ... more >>>

Tensor calculus over semirings is shown relevant to complexity
theory in unexpected ways. First, evaluating well-formed tensor
formulas with explicit tensor entries is shown complete for $\olpus\P$,
for $\NP$, and for $\#\P$ as the semiring varies. Indeed the
permanent of a matrix is shown expressible as ... more >>>

Consider property testing on bounded degree graphs and let $\varepsilon > 0$ denote the proximity parameter. A remarkable theorem of Newman-Sohler (SICOMP 2013) asserts that all properties of planar graphs (more generally hyperfinite) are testable with query complexity only depending on $\varepsilon$. Recent advances in testing minor-freeness have proven that ... more >>>

The work in this paper is to initiate a theory of testing
monomials in multivariate polynomials. The central question is to
ask whether a polynomial represented by certain economically
compact structure has a multilinear monomial in its sum-product
expansion. The complexity aspects of this problem and its variants
are investigated ... more >>>

The Counting Constraint Satisfaction Problem (#CSP(H)) over a finite
relational structure H can be expressed as follows: given a
relational structure G over the same vocabulary,
determine the number of homomorphisms from G to H.
In this paper we characterize relational structures H for which
#CSP(H) can be solved in ... more >>>

The planar Hajos calculus is the Hajos calculus with the restriction that all the graphs that appear in the construction (including a final graph) must be planar. We prove that the planar Hajos calculus is polynomially bounded iff the HajLos calculus is polynomially bounded.

We investigate the computational complexity
of the minimal polynomial of an integer matrix.

We show that the computation of the minimal polynomial
is in AC^0(GapL), the AC^0-closure of the logspace
counting class GapL, which is contained in NC^2.
Our main result is that the problem is hard ... more >>>

Computational problems on point lattices play a central role in many areas of computer science including integer programming, coding theory, cryptanalysis, and especially the design of secure cryptosystems. In this survey, we present known results and open questions related to the complexity of the most important of these problems, the ... more >>>

Autoepistemic logic is one of the most successful formalisms for nonmonotonic reasoning. In this paper we provide a proof-theoretic analysis of sequent calculi for credulous and sceptical reasoning in propositional autoepistemic logic, introduced by Bonatti and Olivetti (ACM ToCL, 2002). We show that the calculus for credulous reasoning obeys almost ... more >>>

Circumscription is one of the main formalisms for non-monotonic reasoning. It uses reasoning with minimal models, the key idea being that minimal models have as few exceptions as possible. In this contribution we provide the first comprehensive proof-complexity analysis of different proof systems for propositional circumscription. In particular, we investigate ... more >>>

We study two register arithmetic computation and skew arithmetic circuits. Our main results are the following:

(1) For commutative computations, we show that an exponential circuit size lower bound
for a model of 2-register straight-line programs (SLPs) which is a universal model
of computation (unlike width-2 algebraic branching programs that ... more >>>

This paper is motivated by the open question
whether the union of two disjoint NP-complete sets always is
NP-complete. We discover that such unions retain
much of the complexity of their single components. More precisely,
they are complete with respect to more general reducibilities.

The starting point of this paper is that instances of computational problems often do not exist in isolation. Rather, multiple and correlated instances of the same problem arise naturally in the real world. The challenge is how to gain computationally from instance correlations when they exist. We will be interested ... more >>>

Game theory has been used for a long time to study phenomena in evolutionary biology, beginning systematically with the seminal work of John Maynard Smith. A central concept in this connection has been the notion of an evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS) in a symmetric two-player strategic form game. A regular ... more >>>

We give new evidence that quantum computers -- moreover, rudimentary quantum computers built entirely out of linear-optical elements -- cannot be efficiently simulated by classical computers. In particular, we define a
model of computation in which identical photons are generated, sent through a linear-optical network, then nonadaptively measured to count ... more >>>

Games may be represented in many different ways, and different representations of games affect the complexity of problems associated with games, such as finding a Nash equilibrium. The traditional method of representing a game is to explicitly list all the payoffs, but this incurs an exponential blowup as the number ... more >>>

We consider the computational complexity of some problems
dealing with matrix rank. Let E,S be subsets of a
commutative ring R. Let x_1, x_2, ..., x_t be variables.
Given a matrix M = M(x_1, x_2, ..., x_t) with entries
chosen from E union {x_1, x_2, ..., ... more >>>

It is generally assumed that you can make a financial asset out of any underlying event or combination thereof, and then sell a security. We show that while this is theoretically true from the financial engineering perspective, compound securities might be intractable to price. Even given no information asymmetries, or ... more >>>

Recently one has started to investigate the
computational power of spiking neurons (also called ``integrate and
fire neurons''). These are neuron models that are substantially
more realistic from the biological point of view than the
ones which are traditionally employed in artificial neural nets.
It has turned out that the ... more >>>

The formalism of programs over monoids has been studied for its close
connection to parallel complexity classes defined by small-depth
boolean circuits. We investigate two basic questions about this
model. When is a monoid rich enough that it can recognize arbitrary
languages (provided no restriction on length is imposed)? When ... more >>>

Boolean satisfiability problems are an important benchmark for questions about complexity, algorithms, heuristics and threshold phenomena. Recent work on heuristics, and the satisfiability threshold has centered around the structure and connectivity of the solution space. Motivated by this work, we study structural and connectivity-related properties of the space of solutions ... more >>>

We continue the study of the degree of polynomials representing threshold functions modulo 6 initiated by Barrington, Beigel and Rudich. We use the framework established by the authors relating representations by symmetric polynomials to simultaneous protocols. We show that proving bounds on the degree of Threshold functions is equivalent to ... more >>>

We study the density of the weights of Generalized Reed--Muller codes. Let $RM_p(r,m)$ denote the code of multivariate polynomials over $\F_p$ in $m$ variables of total degree at most $r$. We consider the case of fixed degree $r$, when we let the number of variables $m$ tend to infinity. We ... more >>>

We propose the following computational assumption: in general if we try to compress the depth of a circuit family (parallel time) more than a constant factor we will suffer super-quasi-polynomial blowup in the size (number of processors). This assumption is only slightly stronger than the popular assumption about the robustness ... more >>>

Building upon the known generalized-quantifier-based first-order
characterization of LOGCFL, we lay the groundwork for a deeper
investigation. Specifically, we examine subclasses of LOGCFL arising
from varying the arity and nesting of groupoidal quantifiers. Our
work extends the elaborate theory relating monoidal quantifiers to
NC^1 and its subclasses. In the ... more >>>

The reachability problem for graphs cannot be described, in the
sense of descriptive complexity theory, using a single first-order
formula. This is true both for directed and undirected graphs, both
in the finite and infinite. However, if we restrict ourselves to
graphs in which a certain graph parameter is fixed ... more >>>

We study the $\leadingones$ game, a Mastermind-type guessing game first
regarded as a test case in the complexity theory of randomized search
heuristics. The first player, Carole, secretly chooses a string $z \in \{0,1\}^n$ and a
permutation $\pi$ of $[n]$.
The goal of the second player, Paul, is to ... more >>>

Most of the research in communication complexity theory is focused on the
fixed-partition model (in this model the partition of the input between
Alice and Bob is fixed). Nonetheless, the best-partition model (the model
that allows Alice and Bob to choose the partition) has a lot of
more >>>

The universal relation is the communication problem in which Alice and Bob get as inputs two distinct strings, and they are required to find a coordinate on which the strings differ. The study of this problem is motivated by its connection to Karchmer-Wigderson relations, which are communication problems that are ... more >>>

We investigate the s-t-connectivity problem for directed planar graphs, which is hard for L and is contained in NL but is not known to be complete. We show that this problem is logspace-reducible to its complement, and we show that the problem of searching graphs of genus 1 reduces to ... more >>>

We introduce the entangled quantum polynomial hierarchy $QEPH$ as the class of problems that are efficiently verifiable given alternating quantum proofs that may be entangled with each other. We prove $QEPH$ collapses to its second level. In fact, we show that a polynomial number of alternations collapses to just two. ... more >>>

In this paper, we prove that most of the boolean functions, $f : \{-1,1\}^n \rightarrow \{-1,1\}$
satisfy the Fourier Entropy Influence (FEI) Conjecture due to Friedgut and Kalai (Proc. AMS'96)\cite{FG96}. The conjecture says that the Entropy of a boolean function is at most a constant times the Influence of ... more >>>

In a sampling problem, we are given an input $x\in\left\{0,1\right\} ^{n}$, and asked to sample approximately from a probability
distribution $D_{x}$ over poly(n)-bit strings. In a search problem, we are given an input
$x\in\left\{ 0,1\right\} ^{n}$, and asked to find a member of a nonempty set
$A_{x}$ with high probability. ... more >>>

The solving of Quantified Boolean Formulas (QBF) has been advanced considerably in the last two decades. In response to this, several proof systems have been put forward to universally verify QBF solvers.
QRAT by Heule et al. is one such example of this and builds on technology from DRAT, ... more >>>

How much computational resource do we need for cryptography? This is an important question of both theoretical and practical interests. In this paper, we study the problem on pseudorandom functions (PRFs) in the context of circuit complexity. Perhaps surprisingly, we prove extremely tight upper and lower bounds in various circuit ... more >>>

We consider the problem of computing the Hamming weight of an n-bit vector using a circuit with gates for GF2 addition and multiplication only. We show the number of multiplications necessary and sufficient to build such a circuit is n - |n| where |n| is the Hamming weight of the ... more >>>

Numerous works have studied the probability that a length $t-1$ random walk on an expander is confined to a given rectangle $S_1 \times \ldots \times S_t$, providing both upper and lower bounds for this probability.
However, when the densities of the sets $S_i$ may depend on the walk length (e.g., ... more >>>

We present an elementary, self-contained proof of the result of Goldwasser and Rothblum [GR07] that the existence of a (perfect) statistically secure obfuscator implies a collapse of the polynomial hierarchy. In fact, we show that an existence of a weaker object implies a somewhat stronger statement. In addition, we extend ... more >>>

The class of model checking for first-order formulas on sparse graphs has a complete problem with respect to fine-grained reductions, Orthogonal Vectors (OV) [GIKW17]. This paper studies extensions of this class or more lenient parameterizations. We consider classes obtained by allowing function symbols;
first-order on ordered structures; adding various notions ... more >>>

We consider the complexity of the firefighter problem where ${b \geq 1}$ firefighters are available at each time step. This problem is proved NP-complete even on trees of degree at most three and budget one (Finbow et al. 2007) and on trees of bounded degree $b+3$ for any fixed budget ... more >>>

We describe a public-key cryptosystem with worst-case/average case
equivalence. The cryptosystem has an amortized plaintext to
ciphertext expansion of $O(n)$, relies on the hardness of the
$\tilde O(n^2)$-unique shortest vector problem for lattices, and
requires a public key of size at most $O(n^4)$ bits. The new
cryptosystem generalizes a conceptually ... more >>>

We study the structure of the Fourier coefficients of low degree multivariate polynomials over finite fields. We consider three properties: (i) the number of nonzero Fourier coefficients; (ii) the sum of the absolute value of the Fourier coefficients; and (iii) the size of the linear subspace spanned by the nonzero ... more >>>

Let $G$ be a finite abelian group of torsion $r$ and let $A$ be a subset of $G$.
The Freiman-Ruzsa theorem asserts that if $|A+A| \le K|A|$
then $A$ is contained in a coset of a subgroup of $G$ of size at most $K^2 r^{K^4} |A|$. It was ... more >>>

A 1976 theorem of Chaitin, strengthening a 1969 theorem of Meyer,says that infinitely many lengths n have a paucity of trivial strings (only a bounded number of strings of length n having trivially low plain Kolmogorov complexities). We use the probabilistic method to give a new proof of this fact. ... more >>>

We study preprocessing algorithms for the function-inversion problem. In this problem, an algorithm gets oracle access to a function $f\colon[N] \to [N]$ and takes as input $S$ bits of auxiliary information about $f$, along with a point $y \in [N]$. After running for time $T$, the algorithm must output an ... more >>>

Rounding has proven to be a fundamental tool in theoretical computer science. By observing that rounding and partitioning of $\mathbb{R}^d$ are equivalent, we introduce the following natural partition problem which we call the secluded hypercube partition problem: Given $k\in\mathbb{N}$ (ideally small) and $\epsilon>0$ (ideally large), is there a partition of ... more >>>

We consider the function ensembles emerging from the
construction of Goldreich, Goldwasser and Micali (GGM),
when applied to an arbitrary pseudoramdon generator.
We show that, in general, such functions
fail to yield correlation intractable ensembles.
Specifically, it may happen that, given a description of such a ... more >>>

We consider separations of reducibilities in the context of
resource-bounded measure theory. First, we show a result on
polynomial-time bounded reducibilities: for every p-random set R,
there is a set which is reducible to R with k+1 non-adaptive
queries, but is not reducible to any other p-random set with ... more >>>

The Graph Clustering Problem is parameterized by a sequence
of positive integers, $m_1,...,m_t$.
The input is a sequence of $\sum_{i=1}^{t}m_i$ graphs,
and the question is whether the equivalence classes
under the graph isomorphism relation have sizes which match
the sequence of parameters.
In this note
we show ... more >>>

The input to the {\em Graph Clustering Problem}\/
consists of a sequence of integers $m_1,...,m_t$
and a sequence of $\sum_{i=1}^{t}m_i$ graphs.
The question is whether the equivalence classes,
under the graph isomorphism relation,
of the input graphs have sizes which match the input sequence of integers.
In this note ... more >>>

We study the approximation of halfspaces $h:\{0,1\}^n\to\{0,1\}$ in the infinity norm by polynomials and rational functions of any given degree. Our main result is an explicit construction of the "hardest" halfspace, for which we prove polynomial and rational approximation lower bounds that match the trivial upper bounds achievable for all ... more >>>

Let $f$ be a Boolean function given as either a truth table or a circuit. How difficult is it to find the decision tree complexity, also known as deterministic query complexity, of $f$ in both cases? We prove that this problem is $NC$-hard and PSPACE-hard, respectively. The second bound is ... more >>>

We show that the Hidden Subgroup Problem for black-box groups is in $\mathrm{BPP}^\mathrm{MKTP}$ (where $\mathrm{MKTP}$ is the Minimum $\mathrm{KT}$ Problem) using the techniques of Allender et al (2018). We also show that the problem is in $\mathrm{ZPP}^\mathrm{MKTP}$ provided that there is a \emph{pac overestimator} computable in $\mathrm{ZPP}^\mathrm{MKTP}$ for the logarithm ... more >>>

In this paper, we apply tools from algebraic geometry to prove new results concerning extractors for algebraic sets, the recursive Fourier sampling problem, and VC dimension. We present a new construction of an extractor which works for algebraic sets defined by polynomials over $\mathbb{F}_2$ of substantially higher degree than the ... more >>>

\begin{abstract}
Given a monomial ideal $I=\angle{m_1,m_2,\cdots,m_k}$ where $m_i$
are monomials and a polynomial $f$ as an arithmetic circuit the
\emph{Ideal Membership Problem } is to test if $f\in I$. We study
this problem and show the following results.
\begin{itemize}
\item[(a)] If the ideal $I=\angle{m_1,m_2,\cdots,m_k}$ for a
more >>>

We show Minimum Vertex Cover NP-hard to approximate to within a factor
of 1.3606. This improves on the previously known factor of 7/6.

The modulo $p$ counting principle is a first-order axiom
schema saying that it is possible to count modulo $p$ the number of
elements of the first-order definable subsets of the universe (and of
the finite Cartesian products of the universe with itself) in a
consistent way. It trivially holds on ... more >>>

We give a simpler proof, via query elimination, of a result due to O'Donnell, Saks, Schramm and Servedio, which shows a lower bound on the zero-error randomized query complexity of a function $f$ in terms of the maximum influence of any variable of $f$. Our lower bound also applies to ... more >>>

We investigate the connection between propositional proof systems and their canonical pairs. It is known that simulations between proof systems translate to reductions between their canonical pairs. We focus on the opposite direction and study the following questions.

Q1: Where does the implication [can(f) \le_m can(g) => f \le_s ... more >>>

The threshold degree of a Boolean function
$f\colon\{0,1\}\to\{-1,+1\}$ is the least degree of a real
polynomial $p$ such $f(x)\equiv\mathrm{sgn}\; p(x).$ We
construct two halfspaces on $\{0,1\}^n$ whose intersection has
threshold degree $\Theta(\sqrt n),$ an exponential improvement on
previous lower bounds. This solves an open problem due to Klivans
(2002) and ... more >>>

For $f$ a weighted voting scheme used by $n$ voters to choose between two candidates, the $n$ \emph{Shapley-Shubik Indices} (or {\em Shapley values}) of $f$ provide a measure of how much control each voter can exert over the overall outcome of the vote. Shapley-Shubik indices were introduced by Lloyd Shapley ... more >>>

We show that k-tree isomorphism can be decided in logarithmic
space by giving a logspace canonical labeling algorithm. This improves
over the previous StUL upper bound and matches the lower bound. As a
consequence, the isomorphism, the automorphism, as well as the
canonization problem for k-trees ... more >>>

The isomorphism problem for planar graphs is known to be efficiently solvable. For planar 3-connected graphs, the isomorphism problem can be solved by efficient parallel algorithms, it is in the class AC^1.

In this paper we improve the upper bound for planar 3-connected graphs to unambiguous logspace, in fact to ... more >>>

We investigate the computational complexity of the
isomorphism problem for one-time-only branching programs (BP1-Iso):
on input of two one-time-only branching programs B and B',
decide whether there exists a permutation of the variables of B'
such that it becomes equivalent to B.

Our main result is a two-round interactive ... more >>>

The class TFNP is the search analog of NP with the additional guarantee that any instance has a solution. TFNP has attracted extensive attention due to its natural syntactic subclasses that capture the computational complexity of important search problems from algorithmic game theory, combinatorial optimization and computational topology. Thus, one ... more >>>

We present a brief survey of results on relations between the Kolmogorov
complexity of infinite strings and several measures of information content
(dimensions) known from dimension theory, information theory or fractal
geometry.

Special emphasis is laid on bounds on the complexity of strings in
more >>>

This is a purely pedagogical text.
We advocate using KW-games as a teaser (or ``riddle'') for a complexity theoretic course.
In particular, stating the KW-game for a familiar NP-complete problem such as 3-Colorability and asking to prove that it requires more than polylogarithmic communication poses a seemingly tractable question ... more >>>

We prove several results which, together with prior work, provide a nearly-complete picture of the relationships among classical communication complexity classes between $P$ and $PSPACE$, short of proving lower bounds against classes for which no explicit lower bounds were already known. Our article also serves as an up-to-date survey on ... more >>>

We prove two new results about the inability of low-degree polynomials to uniformly approximate constant-depth circuits, even to slightly-better-than-trivial error. First, we prove a tight $\tilde{\Omega}(n^{1/2})$ lower bound on the threshold degree of the Surjectivity function on $n$ variables. This matches the best known threshold degree bound for any AC$^0$ ... more >>>

Traditional quantum state tomography requires a number of measurements that grows exponentially with the number of qubits n. But using ideas from computational learning theory, we show that "for most practical purposes" one can learn a state using a number of measurements that grows only linearly with n. Besides possible ... more >>>

The two-way finite automaton with quantum and classical states (2QCFA), defined by Ambainis and Watrous, is a model of quantum computation whose quantum part is extremely limited; however, as they showed, 2QCFA are surprisingly powerful: a 2QCFA with only a single-qubit can recognize the language $L_{pal}=\{w \in \{a,b\}^*:w \text{ is ... more >>>

In recent years, a very exciting and promising method for proving lower bounds for arithmetic circuits has been proposed. This method combines the method of {\it depth reduction} developed in the works of Agrawal-Vinay [AV08], Koiran [Koi12] and Tavenas [Tav13], and the use of the shifted partial derivative complexity measure ... more >>>

We study differential privacy in a distributed setting where two parties would like to perform analysis of their joint data while preserving privacy for both datasets. Our results imply almost tight lower bounds on the accuracy of such data analyses, both for specific natural functions (such as Hamming distance) and ... more >>>

Tiwari (1987) considered the following scenario: k+1 processors P_0,...,P_k,
connected by k links to form a linear array, compute a function f(x,y), for
inputs (x,y) from a finite domain X x Y, where x is only known to P_0 and
y is only known to P_k; the intermediate ... more >>>

In this work we study the list-decoding size of Reed-Muller codes. Given a received word and a distance parameter, we are interested in bounding the size of the list of Reed-Muller codewords that are within that distance from the received word. Previous bounds of Gopalan, Klivans and Zuckerman~\cite{GKZ08} on the ... more >>>

We construct a simple and total XOR function $F$ on $2n$ variables that has only $O(\sqrt{n})$ spectral norm, $O(n^2)$ approximate rank and $n^{O(\log n)}$ approximate nonnegative rank. We show it has polynomially large randomized bounded-error communication complexity of $\Omega(\sqrt{n})$. This yields the first exponential gap between the logarithm of the ... more >>>

We study the Lovasz number theta along with two further SDP relaxations $\thetI$, $\thetII$
of the independence number and the corresponding relaxations of the
chromatic number on random graphs G(n,p). We prove that \theta is
concentrated about its mean, and that the relaxations of the chromatic
number in the case ... more >>>

Computational analogues of information-theoretic notions have given rise to some of the most interesting phenomena in the theory of computation. For example, computational indistinguishability, Goldwasser and Micali '84, which is the computational analogue of statistical distance, enabled the bypassing of Shanon's impossibility results on perfectly secure encryption, and provided the ... more >>>

We show that the perfect matching problem in general graphs is in Quasi-NC. That is, we give a deterministic parallel algorithm which runs in $O(\log^3 n)$ time on $n^{O(\log^2 n)}$ processors. The result is obtained by a derandomization of the Isolation Lemma for perfect matchings, which was introduced in the ... more >>>

We study the one-way number-on-the-forhead (NOF) communication
complexity of the k-layer pointer jumping problem. Strong lower
bounds for this problem would have important implications in circuit
complexity. All of our results apply to myopic protocols (where
players see only one layer ahead, but can still ... more >>>

The breakpoint distance between two $n$-permutations is the number
of pairs that appear consecutively in one but not in the other. In
the median problem for breakpoints one is given a set of
permutations and has to construct a permutation that minimizes the
sum of breakpoint ... more >>>

We consider variants of the Minimum Circuit Size Problem MCSP, where the goal is to minimize the size of oracle circuits computing a given function. When the oracle is QBF, the resulting problem MCSP$^{QBF}$ is known to be complete for PSPACE under ZPP reductions. We show that it is not ... more >>>

The minrank of a graph $G$ is the minimum rank of a matrix $M$ that can be obtained from the adjacency matrix of $G$ by switching ones to zeros (i.e., deleting edges) and setting all diagonal entries to one. This quantity is closely related to the fundamental information-theoretic problems of ... more >>>

We show that a DNF formula that has a CNF representation that contains
at least one ``$1/poly$-heavy''
clause with respect to a distribution $D$ is weakly learnable
under this distribution. So DNF that are not weakly
learnable under the distribution $D$ do not have
any ``$1/poly$-heavy'' clauses in any of ... more >>>

We study the problem of finding multicollisions, that is, the total search problem in which the input is a function $\mathcal{C} : [A] \to [B]$ (represented as a circuit) and the goal is to find $L \leq \lceil A/B \rceil$ distinct elements $x_1,\ldots, x_L \in A$ such that $\mathcal{C}(x_1) = ... more >>>

Party $A_i$ of $k$ parties $A_1,\dots,A_k$ receives on
its forehead a $t$-tuple $(a_{i1},\dots,a_{it})$ of
elements from the group $G=\text{SL}(2,q)$. The parties
are promised that the interleaved product $a_{11}\dots
a_{k1}a_{12}\dots a_{k2}\dots a_{1t}\dots a_{kt}$ is
equal either to the identity $e$ or to some other fixed
element $g\in G$. Their goal is ... more >>>

We study the set disjointness problem in the number-on-the-forehead model.

(i) We prove that $k$-party set disjointness has randomized and nondeterministic
communication complexity $\Omega(n/4^k)^{1/4}$ and Merlin-Arthur complexity $\Omega(n/4^k)^{1/8}.$
These bounds are close to tight. Previous lower bounds (2007-2008) for $k\geq3$ parties
were weaker than $n^{1/(k+1)}/2^{k^2}$ in all ... more >>>

The folk theorem suggests that finding Nash Equilibria
in repeated games should be easier than in one-shot games. In
contrast, we show that the problem of finding any (epsilon) Nash
equilibrium for a three-player infinitely-repeated game is
computationally intractable (even when all payoffs are in
{-1,0,-1}), unless all of PPAD ... more >>>

We prove that the modular communication complexity of the
undirected graph connectivity problem UCONN equals Theta(n),
in contrast to the well-known Theta(n*log n) bound in the
deterministic case, and to the Omega(n*loglog n) lower bound
in the nondeterministic case, recently proved by ... more >>>

Is there a general theorem that tells us when we can hope for exponential speedups from quantum algorithms, and when we cannot? In this paper, we make two advances toward such a theorem, in the black-box model where most quantum algorithms operate.

First, we show that for any problem that ... more >>>

We survey recent developments related to the Minimum Circuit Size Problem

We study the $k$-party `number on the forehead' communication complexity of composed functions $f \circ \vec{g}$, where $f:\{0,1\}^n \to \{\pm 1\}$, $\vec{g} = (g_1,\ldots,g_n)$, $g_i : \{0,1\}^k \to \{0,1\}$ and for $(x_1,\ldots,x_k) \in (\{0,1\}^n)^k$, $f \circ \vec{g}(x_1,\ldots,x_k) = f(\ldots,g_i(x_{1,i},\ldots,x_{k,i}), \ldots)$. When $\vec{g} = (g,g,\ldots,g)$ we denote $f \circ \vec{g}$ by ... more >>>

The Minimum Circuit Size Problem (MCSP) has been the focus of intense study recently; MCSP is hard for SZK under rather powerful reductions, and is provably not hard under “local” reductions computable in TIME($n^{0.49}$). The question of whether MCSP is NP-hard (or indeed, hard even for small subclasses of P) ... more >>>

The Perebor (Russian for “brute-force search”) conjectures, which date back to the 1950s and 1960s are some of the oldest conjectures in complexity theory. The conjectures are a stronger form of the NP ? = P conjecture (which they predate) and state that for “meta-complexity” problems, such as the Time-bounded ... more >>>

The problem of predicting a sequence $x_1, x_2,.... $ where each $x_i$ belongs
to a finite alphabet $A$ is considered. Each letter $x_{t+1}$ is predicted
using information on the word $x_1, x_2, ...., x_t $ only. We use the game
theoretical interpretation which can be traced to Laplace where there ... more >>>

This paper deals with the reversible circuits with n input and
output nodes, consisting of the reversible gates FAN-IN=FAN-OUT<3.
We define a normal form of such type of circuits and describe a reduction
algorithm to transform a circuit in this form. Furthermore we use it for
checking whether two circuits ... more >>>

The {\it nucleon} is introduced as a new allocation concept for
non-negative cooperative n-person transferable utility games.
The nucleon may be viewed as the multiplicative analogue of
Schmeidler's nucleolus.
It is shown that the nucleon of (not necessarily bipartite) matching
games ... more >>>

An increasing number of results in graph theory, combinatorics and
theoretical computer science is obtained with the help of computers,
e.g. the proof of the Four Colours Theorem or the computation of
certain Ramsey numbers. Binary decision diagrams, known as tools in
hardware verification ... more >>>

We give a tight lower bound of Omega(\sqrt{n}) for the randomized one-way communication complexity of the Boolean Hidden Matching Problem [BJK04]. Since there is a quantum one-way communication complexity protocol of O(log n) qubits for this problem, we obtain an exponential separation of quantum and classical one-way communication complexity for ... more >>>

We define a general maximization operator max and a general minimization
operator min for complexity classes and study the inclusion structure of
the classes max.P, max.NP, max.coNP, min.P, min.NP, and min.coNP.
It turns out that Krentel's class OptP fits naturally into this frame-
work (it can be ... more >>>

Branching programs are computation models
measuring the space of (Turing machine) computations.
Read-once branching programs (BP1s) are the
most general model where each graph-theoretical path is the computation
path for some input. Exponential lower bounds on the size of read-once
branching programs are known since a long time. Nevertheless, there ... more >>>

In the "correlated sampling" problem, two players, say Alice and Bob, are given two distributions, say $P$ and $Q$ respectively, over the same universe and access to shared randomness. The two players are required to output two elements, without any interaction, sampled according to their respective distributions, while trying to ... more >>>

In 1978, Schaefer considered a subclass of languages in
NP and proved a ``dichotomy theorem'' for this class. The subclass
considered were problems expressible as ``constraint satisfaction
problems'', and the ``dichotomy theorem'' showed that every language in
this class is either in P, or is NP-hard. This result is in ... more >>>

The \emph{Orbit problem} is defined as follows: Given a matrix $A\in
\Q ^{n\times n}$ and vectors $\x,\y\in \Q ^n$, does there exist a
non-negative integer $i$ such that $A^i\x=\y$. This problem was
shown to be in deterministic polynomial time by Kannan and Lipton in
\cite{KL1986}. In this paper we place ... more >>>

The ordering principle states that every finite linear order has a least element. We show that, in the relativized setting, the surjective weak pigeonhole principle for polynomial time functions does not prove a Herbrandized version of the ordering principle over $\mathrm{T}^1_2$. This answers an open question raised in [Buss, Ko{\l}odziejczyk ... more >>>

A line of work has shown how nontrivial uniform algorithms for analyzing circuits can be used to derive non-uniform circuit lower bounds. We show how the non-existence of nontrivial circuit-analysis algorithms can also imply non-uniform circuit lower bounds. Our connections yield new win-win circuit lower bounds, and suggest a potential ... more >>>

The parallel repetition conjecture (PRC) of Feige and Lovasz says that the
error probability of a two prover one round interactive protocol repeated $n$
times in parallel is exponentially small in $n$.
We show that the PRC is true in the case when
the bipartite graph of dependence between ... more >>>

We investigate the parameterized complexity of deciding whether a constraint network is $k$-consistent. We show that, parameterized by $k$, the problem is complete for the complexity class co-W[2]. As secondary parameters we consider the maximum domain size $d$ and the maximum number $\ell$ of constraints in which a variable occurs. ... more >>>

In a breakthrough result, Razborov (2003) gave optimal
lower bounds on the communication complexity of every function f
of the form f(x,y)=D(|x AND y|) for some D:{0,1,...,n}->{0,1}, in
the bounded-error quantum model with and without prior entanglement.
This was proved by the _multidimensional_ discrepancy method. We
give an entirely ... more >>>

Let C={c_1,...,c_n} be a set of constraints over a set of
variables. The {\em satisfiability-gap} of C is the smallest
fraction of unsatisfied constraints, ranging over all possible
assignments for the variables.

We prove a new combinatorial amplification lemma that doubles the
satisfiability-gap of a constraint-system, with only a linear ... more >>>

We continue an investigation into resource-bounded Kolmogorov complexity \cite{abkmr}, which highlights the close connections between circuit complexity and Levin's time-bounded Kolmogorov complexity measure Kt (and other measures with a similar flavor), and also exploits derandomization techniques to provide new insights regarding Kolmogorov complexity.
The Kolmogorov measures that have been ... more >>>

It is shown that the PL hierarchy defined in terms of the
standard Ruzzo-Simon-Tompa relativization collapses to PL.

Multiplicity codes are a generalization of RS and RM codes where for each evaluation point we output the evaluation of a low-degree polynomial and all of its directional derivatives up to order $s$. Multi-variate multiplicity codes are locally decodable with the natural local decoding algorithm that reads values on a ... more >>>

In the average-case $k$-SUM problem, given $r$ integers chosen uniformly at random from $\{0,\ldots,M-1\}$, the objective is to find a set of $k$ numbers that sum to $0$ modulo $M$ (this set is called a ``solution''). In the related $k$-XOR problem, given $k$ uniformly random Boolean vectors of length $\log{M}$, ... more >>>

The approximate degree of a Boolean function $f$ is the least degree of a real polynomial that approximates $f$ pointwise to error at most $1/3$. The approximate degree of $f$ is known to be a lower bound on the quantum query complexity of $f$ (Beals et al., FOCS 1998 and ... more >>>

The perfect matching problem is known to
be in P, in randomized NC, and it is hard for NL.
Whether the perfect matching problem is in NC is one of
the most prominent open questions in complexity
theory regarding parallel computations.

Grigoriev and Karpinski studied the perfect matching problem
more >>>

The two-way quantum/classical finite automaton (2QCFA), defined by Ambainis and Watrous, is a model of quantum computation whose quantum part is extremely limited; however, as they showed, 2QCFA are surprisingly powerful: a 2QCFA, with a single qubit, can recognize, with one-sided bounded-error, the language $L_{eq}=\{a^m b^m |m \in \mathbb{N}\}$ in ... more >>>

The threshold degree of a Boolean function $f$ is the minimum degree of
a real polynomial $p$ that represents $f$ in sign: $f(x)\equiv\mathrm{sgn}\; p(x)$. Introduced
in the seminal work of Minsky and Papert (1969), this notion is central to
some of the strongest algorithmic and complexity-theoretic results for
more >>>

We study the problem of polynomial identity testing (PIT) for depth
2 arithmetic circuits over matrix algebra. We show that identity
testing of depth 3 (Sigma-Pi-Sigma) arithmetic circuits over a field
F is polynomial time equivalent to identity testing of depth 2
(Pi-Sigma) arithmetic circuits over U_2(F), the ... more >>>

We explore the power of interactive proofs with a distributed verifier. In this setting, the verifier consists of $n$ nodes and a graph $G$ that defines their communication pattern. The prover is a single entity that communicates with all nodes by short messages. The goal is to verify that the ... more >>>

Identify a string x over {0,1} with the positive integer
whose binary representation is 1x. We say that a self-reduction is
k-local if on input x all queries belong to {x-1,...,x-k}. We show
that all k-locally self-reducible sets belong to PSPACE. However, the
power of k-local self-reductions changes drastically between ... more >>>

The randomized query complexity $R(f)$ of a boolean function $f\colon\{0,1\}^n\to\{0,1\}$ is famously characterized (via Yao's minimax) by the least number of queries needed to distinguish a distribution $D_0$ over $0$-inputs from a distribution $D_1$ over $1$-inputs, maximized over all pairs $(D_0,D_1)$. We ask: Does this task become easier if we ... more >>>

We study the power of randomized complexity classes that are given oracle access to a natural property of Razborov and Rudich (JCSS, 1997) or its special case, the Minimal Circuit Size Problem (MCSP).
We obtain new circuit lower bounds, as well as some hardness results for the relativized version ... more >>>

The study of monotonicity and negation complexity for Boolean functions has been prevalent in complexity theory as well as in computational learning theory, but little attention has been given to it in the cryptographic context. Recently, Goldreich and Izsak (2012) have initiated a study of whether cryptographic primitives can be ... more >>>

We investigate the role of nondeterminism in Winfree's abstract Tile Assembly Model (aTAM), which was conceived to model artificial molecular self-assembling systems constructed from DNA. Designing tile systems that assemble shapes, due to the algorithmic richness of the aTAM, is a form of sophisticated "molecular programming". Of particular practical importance ... more >>>

In a recent work (Ghazi et al., SODA 2016), the authors with Komargodski and Kothari initiated the study of communication with contextual uncertainty, a setup aiming to understand how efficient communication is possible when the communicating parties imperfectly share a huge context. In this setting, Alice is given a function ... more >>>

In the `Number-on-Forehead' (NOF) model of multiparty communication, the input is a $k \times m$ boolean matrix $A$ (where $k$ is the number of players) and Player $i$ sees all bits except those in the $i$-th row, and the players communicate by broadcast in order to evaluate a specified ... more >>>

The (extended) Binary Value Principle (eBVP, the equation $\sum x_i 2^{i-1} = -k$ for $k > 0$
and in the presence of $x_i^2=x_i$) has received a lot of attention recently, several lower
bounds have been proved for it [Alekseev et al 20, Alekseev 21, Part and Tzameret 21].
Also ... more >>>

In the field of constraint satisfaction problems (CSP), promise CSPs are an exciting new direction of study. In a promise CSP, each constraint comes in two forms: "strict" and "weak," and in the associated decision problem one must distinguish between being able to satisfy all the strict constraints versus not ... more >>>

The class QMA(k), introduced by Kobayashi et al., consists
of all languages that can be verified using k unentangled quantum
proofs. Many of the simplest questions about this class have remained
embarrassingly open: for example, can we give any evidence that k
quantum proofs are more powerful than one? Can ... more >>>

Consider a system M of parallel machines, each with a strictly increasing and differentiable load dependent latency function. The users of such a system are of infinite number and act selfishly, routing their infinitesimally small portion of the total flow r they control, to machines of currently minimum delay. It ... more >>>

Three fundamental results of Levin involve algorithms or reductions
whose running time is exponential in the length of certain programs. We study the
question of whether such dependency can be made polynomial.

(1) Levin's ``optimal search algorithm'' performs at most a constant factor more slowly
than any other fixed ... more >>>

In this paper we put forward a conjecture: an instantiation of the Sliding Scale Conjecture of Bellare, Goldwasser, Lund and Russell to projection games. We refer to this conjecture as the Projection Games Conjecture.

We further suggest the research agenda of establishing new hardness of approximation results based on the ... more >>>

In this paper we study program checking (in the
sense of Blum and Kannan) using constant-depth circuits as
checkers. Our focus is on the number of queries made by the
checker to the program being checked and we term this as the
query complexity of the checker for the given ... more >>>

The Unique Games Conjecture (UGC) has pinned down the approximability of all constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs), showing that a natural semidefinite programming relaxation offers the optimal worst-case approximation ratio for any CSP. This elegant picture, however, does not apply for CSP instances that are perfectly satisfiable, due to the imperfect ... more >>>

We study a new model of space-bounded computation, the {\it random-query} model. The model is based on a branching-program over input variables $x_1,\ldots,x_n$. In each time step, the branching program gets as an input a random index $i \in \{1,\ldots,n\}$, together with the input variable $x_i$ (rather than querying an ... more >>>

We revisit ``the randomized iterate'' technique that was originally used by Goldreich, Krawczyk, and Luby (SICOMP 1993) and refined by Haitner, Harnik and Reingold (CRYPTO 2006) in constructing pseudorandom generators (PRGs) from regular one-way functions (OWFs). We abstract out a technical lemma with connections to several recent work on cryptography ... more >>>

We initiate the study of the *randomness complexity* of differential privacy, i.e., how many random bits an algorithm needs in order to generate accurate differentially private releases. As a test case, we focus on the task of releasing the results of $d$ counting queries, or equivalently all one-way marginals on ... more >>>

In this paper, we investigate and analyze for the first time the
stability properties of heterogeneous networks, which use a
combination of different universally stable queueing policies for
packet routing, in the Adversarial Queueing model. We
interestingly prove that the combination of SIS and LIS policies,
LIS and NTS policies, ... more >>>

Kol and Raz [STOC 2013] showed how to simulate any alternating two-party communication protocol designed to work over the noiseless channel, by a protocol that works over a stochastic channel that corrupts each sent symbol with probability $\epsilon>0$ independently, with only a $1+\mathcal{O}(\sqrt{\H(\epsilon)})$ blowup to the communication. In particular, this ... more >>>

We relate different approaches for proving the unsatisfiability of a system of real polynomial equations over Boolean variables. On the one hand, there are the static proof systems Sherali-Adams and sum-of-squares (a.k.a. Lasserre), which are based on linear and semi-definite programming relaxations. On the other hand, we consider polynomial calculus, ... more >>>

Johnson, Papadimitriou and Yannakakis introduce the class $\PLS$
consisting of optimization problems for which efficient local-
search heuristics exist. We formulate a type-2 problem $\iter$
that characterizes $\PLS$ in style of Beame et al., and prove
a criterion for type-2 problems to be nonreducible to $\iter$.
As a corollary, ... more >>>

Using $\epsilon$-bias spaces over F_2 , we show that the Remote Point Problem (RPP), introduced by Alon et al [APY09], has an $NC^2$ algorithm (achieving the same parameters as [APY09]). We study a generalization of the Remote Point Problem to groups: we replace F_n by G^n for an arbitrary fixed ... more >>>

We consider the resolution proof complexity of propositional formulas which encode random instances of graph $k$-colorability. We obtain a tradeoff between the graph density and the resolution proof complexity.
For random graphs with linearly many edges we obtain linear-exponential lower bounds on the length of resolution refutations. For any $\epsilon>0$, ... more >>>

The importance of {\em width} as a resource in resolution theorem proving
has been emphasized in work of Ben-Sasson and Wigderson. Their results show that lower
bounds on the size of resolution refutations can be proved in a uniform manner by
demonstrating lower bounds on the width ... more >>>

We give an analogue of the Riis Complexity Gap Theorem for Quanti fied Boolean Formulas (QBFs). Every fi rst-order sentence $\phi$ without finite models gives rise to a sequence of QBFs whose minimal refutations in tree-like Q-Resolution are either of polynomial size (if $\phi$ has no models) or at least ... more >>>

In STOC 1988, Ben-Or, Goldwasser, and Wigderson (BGW) established an important milestone in the fields of cryptography and distributed computing by showing that every functionality can be computed with perfect (information-theoretic and error-free) security at the presence of an active (aka Byzantine) rushing adversary that controls up to $n/3$ of ... more >>>

In STOC 1989, Rabin and Ben-Or (RB) established an important milestone in the fields of cryptography and distributed computing by showing that every functionality can be computed with statistical (information-theoretic) security in the presence of an active (aka Byzantine) rushing adversary that controls up to half of the parties. We ... more >>>

We study the round complexity of two-party protocols for
generating a random $n$-bit string such that the output is
guaranteed to have bounded bias (according to some measure) even
if one of the two parties deviates from the protocol (even using
unlimited computational resources). Specifically, we require that
the output's ... more >>>

We show that the satisfiability problem for
bounded error probabilistic ordered branching programs is NP-complete.
If the error is very small however
(more precisely,
if the error is bounded by the reciprocal of the width of the branching program),
then we have a polynomial-time algorithm for the satisfiability problem.
more >>>

We study the security of individual bits in an
RSA encrypted message $E_N(x)$. We show that given $E_N(x)$,
predicting any single bit in $x$ with only a non-negligible
advantage over the trivial guessing strategy, is (through a
polynomial time reduction) as hard as breaking ... more >>>

We study the performance of the Sherali-Adams system for VERTEX COVER on graphs with vector
chromatic number $2+\epsilon$. We are able to construct solutions for LPs derived by any number of Sherali-Adams tightenings by introducing a new tool to establish Local-Global Discrepancy. When restricted to
$O(1/ \epsilon)$ tightenings we show ... more >>>

We continue the study of the shifted partial derivative measure, introduced by Kayal (ECCC 2012), which has been used to prove many strong depth-4 circuit lower bounds starting from the work of Kayal, and that of Gupta et al. (CCC 2013).

We show a strong lower bound on the dimension ... more >>>

We show that computing the approximate length of the shortest vector
in a lattice within a factor c is NP-hard for randomized reductions
for any constant c<sqrt(2). We also give a deterministic reduction
based on a number theoretic conjecture.

We show that the shortest vector problem in lattices
with L_2 norm is NP-hard for randomized reductions. Moreover we
also show that there is a positive absolute constant c, so that to
find a vector which is longer than the shortest non-zero vector by no
more than a factor of ... more >>>

We study the shrinking and separation properties (two notions well-known in descriptive set theory) for NP and coNP and show that under reasonable complexity-theoretic assumptions, both properties do not hold for NP and the shrinking property does not hold for coNP. In particular we obtain the following results.

1. NP ... more >>>

The sign-rank of a matrix A=[A_{ij}] with +/-1 entries
is the least rank of a real matrix B=[B_{ij}] with A_{ij}B_{ij}>0
for all i,j. We obtain the first exponential lower bound on the
sign-rank of a function in AC^0. Namely, let
f(x,y)=\bigwedge_{i=1}^m\bigvee_{j=1}^{m^2} (x_{ij}\wedge y_{ij}).
We show that the matrix [f(x,y)]_{x,y} has ... more >>>

We study $k$-party set disjointness in the simultaneous message-passing model, and show that even if each element $i\in[n]$ is guaranteed to either belong to all $k$ parties or to at most $O(1)$ parties in expectation (and to at most $O(\log n)$ parties with high probability), then $\Omega(n \min(\log 1/\delta, \log ... more >>>

Derandomization techniques are used to show that at least one of the
following holds regarding the size of the counting complexity class
SPP.
1. SPP has p-measure 0.
2. PH is contained in SPP.
In other words, SPP is small by being a negligible subset of
exponential time or large ... more >>>

We explore the space "just above" BQP by defining a complexity class PDQP (Product Dynamical Quantum Polynomial time) which is larger than BQP but does not contain NP relative to an oracle. The class is defined by imagining that quantum computers can perform measurements that do not collapse the ... more >>>

We study the space complexity of the cutting planes proof system, in which the lines in a proof are integral linear inequalities. We measure the space used by a refutation as the number of inequalities that need to be kept on a blackboard while verifying it. We show that any ... more >>>

We show an Omega(sqrt(n)/T^3) lower bound for the space required by any
unidirectional constant-error randomized T-pass streaming algorithm that recognizes whether an expression over two types of parenthesis is well-parenthesized. This proves a conjecture due to Magniez, Mathieu, and Nayak
(2009) and rigorously establishes the peculiar power of bi-directional streams ... more >>>

Recently, there has been exciting progress in understanding the complexity of distributions. Here, the goal is to quantify the resources required to generate (or sample) a distribution. Proving lower bounds in this new setting is more challenging than in the classical setting, and has yielded interesting new techniques and surprising ... more >>>

A graph is called a sum graph if its vertices can be labelled by distinct positive integers such that there is an edge between two vertices if and only if the sum of their labels is the label of another vertex of the graph. Most papers on sum graphs consider ... more >>>

We present an algorithm for learning a mixture of distributions.
The algorithm is based on spectral projection and
is efficient when the components of the mixture are logconcave
distributions.

We show a connection between the deMorgan formula size of a Boolean function and the noise stability of the function. Using this connection, we show that the Fourier spectrum of any balanced Boolean function computed by a deMorgan formula of size $s$ is concentrated on coefficients of degree up to ... more >>>

In this paper we study syntactic branching programs of bounded repetition
representing CNFs of bounded treewidth.
For this purpose we introduce two new structural graph
parameters $d$-pathwidth and clique preserving $d$-pathwidth denoted
by $pw_d(G)$ and $cpw_d(G)$ where $G$ is a graph.
We show that $cpw_2(G) \leq O(tw(G) \Delta(G))$ ... more >>>

It is well-known that randomized communication protocols are more powerful than deterministic protocols. In particular the Equality function requires $\Omega(n)$ deterministic communication complexity but has efficient randomized protocols. Previous work of Chattopadhyay, Lovett and Vinyals shows that randomized communication is strictly stronger than what can be solved by deterministic protocols ... more >>>

We introduce an algebraic proof system that manipulates multilinear arithmetic formulas. We show that this proof system is fairly strong, even when restricted to multilinear arithmetic formulas of a very small depth. Specifically, we show the following:

1. Algebraic proofs manipulating depth 2 multilinear arithmetic formulas polynomially simulate Resolution, Polynomial ... more >>>

The advice complexity of an online problem describes the additional information both necessary and sufficient for online algorithms to compute solutions of a certain quality. In this model, an oracle inspects the input before it is processed by an online algorithm. Depending on the input string, the oracle prepares an ... more >>>

In the catalytic logspace ($CL$) model of (Buhrman et.~al.~STOC 2013), we are given a small work tape, and a larger catalytic tape that has an arbitrary initial configuration. We may edit this tape, but it must be exactly restored to its initial configuration at the completion of the computation. This ... more >>>

We initiate a study of testing properties of graphs that are presented as subgraphs of a fixed (or an explicitly given) graph.
The tester is given free access to a base graph $G=([\n],E)$, and oracle access to a function $f:E\to\{0,1\}$ that represents a subgraph of $G$.
The tester is ... more >>>

This paper tries to fully characterize the properties and relationships
of space classes defined by Turing machines that use less than
logarithmic space - may they be deterministic,
nondeterministic or alternating (DTM, NTM or ATM).

We provide several examples of specific languages ... more >>>

We prove that the sum of $d$ small-bias generators $L
: \F^s \to \F^n$ fools degree-$d$ polynomials in $n$
variables over a prime field $\F$, for any fixed
degree $d$ and field $\F$, including $\F = \F_2 =
{0,1}$.

Our result improves on both the work by Bogdanov and
Viola ... more >>>

A major open problem in proof complexity is to prove super-polynomial lower bounds for AC^0[p]-Frege proofs. This system is the analog of AC^0[p], the class of bounded depth circuits with prime modular counting gates. Despite strong lower bounds for this class dating back thirty years (Razborov, '86 and Smolensky, '87), ... more >>>

Given two codes R,C, their tensor product $R \otimes C$ consists of all matrices whose rows are codewords of R and whose columns are codewords of C. The product $R \otimes C$ is said to be robust if for every matrix M that is far from $R \otimes C$ it ... more >>>

In a seminal paper from 1985, Sistla and Clarke showed
that the model-checking problem for Linear Temporal Logic (LTL) is either NP-complete
or PSPACE-complete, depending on the set of temporal operators used.
If, in contrast, the set of propositional operators is restricted, the complexity may decrease.
... more >>>

We explore the implications of the two queries assumption, $P^{NP[1]}=P_{||}^{NP[2]}$, with respect to the polynomial hierarchy and the classes $AM$ and $MA$.
We prove the following results:

1. $P^{NP[1]}=P_{||}^{NP[2]}$ $\implies$ $AM = MA$
2. $P^{NP[1]}=P_{||}^{NP[2]}$ $\implies$ $PH \subset MA_{/1}$
3. $\exists\;B\;P^{NP[1]^B}=P^{NP[2]^B}$ and $NP^B \not\subseteq coMA^B$.
4. $P^{NP[1]}=P_{||}^{NP[2]}$ $\implies$ $PH ... more >>>

Inspired by Diakonikolas and Kane (2016), we reduce the class of problems consisting of testing whether an unknown distribution over $[n]$ equals a fixed distribution to this very problem when the fixed distribution is uniform over $[n]$. Our reduction preserves the parameters of the problem, which are $n$ and the ... more >>>

"Help bits" are some limited trusted information about an instance or instances of a computational problem that may reduce the computational complexity of solving that instance or instances. In this paper, we study the value of help bits in the settings of randomized and average-case complexity.

Amir, Beigel, and Gasarch ... more >>>

We present two results in structural complexity theory concerned with the following interrelated
topics: computation with postselection/restarting, closed timelike curves (CTCs), and
approximate counting. The first result is a new characterization of the lesser known complexity
class BPP_path in terms of more familiar concepts. Precisely, BPP_path is the class of ... more >>>

The pointer function of G{\"{o}}{\"{o}}s, Pitassi and Watson
\cite{DBLP:journals/eccc/GoosP015a} and its variants have recently
been used to prove separation results among various measures of
complexity such as deterministic, randomized and quantum query
complexities, exact and approximate polynomial degrees, etc. In
particular, the widest possible (quadratic) separations between
deterministic and zero-error ... more >>>

We prove that there exists an absolute constant $\delta>0$ such any binary code $C\subset\{0,1\}^N$ tolerating $(1/2-\delta)N$ adversarial deletions must satisfy $|C|\le 2^{\poly\log N}$ and thus have rate asymptotically approaching $0$. This is the first constant fraction improvement over the trivial bound that codes tolerating $N/2$ adversarial deletions must have rate ... more >>>

The ``log rank'' conjecture consists in the question how exact
the deterministic communication complexity of a problem can be
determinied in terms of algebraic invarants of the communication
matrix of this problem. In the following, we answer this question
in the context of modular communication complexity. ... more >>>

We give alternate proofs for three related results in analysis of Boolean functions, namely the KKL
Theorem, Friedgut’s Junta Theorem, and Talagrand’s strengthening of the KKL Theorem. We follow a
new approach: looking at the first Fourier level of the function after a suitable random restriction and
applying the Log-Sobolev ... more >>>

We introduce the notion of width bounded geometric separator,
develop the techniques for its existence as well as algorithm, and
apply it to obtain a $2^{O(\sqrt{n})}$ time exact algorithm for the
disk covering problem, which seeks to determine the minimal number
of fixed size disks to cover $n$ points on ... more >>>

Diverse applications of Kolmogorov complexity to learning [CIKK16], circuit complexity [OPS19], cryptography [LP20], average-case complexity [Hir21], and proof search [Kra22] have been discovered in recent years. Since the running time of algorithms is a key resource in these fields, it is crucial in the corresponding arguments to consider time-bounded variants ... more >>>

This is a survey of unconditional *pseudorandom generators* (PRGs). A PRG uses a short, truly random seed to generate a long, "pseudorandom" sequence of bits. To be more specific, for each restricted model of computation (e.g., bounded-depth circuits or read-once branching programs), we would like to design a PRG that ... more >>>

A theory, in this context, is a Boolean formula; it is
used to classify instances, or truth assignments. Theories
can model real-world phenomena, and can do so more or less
correctly.
The theory revision, or concept revision, problem is to
correct a given, roughly correct concept.
This problem is ... more >>>

Locally decodable codes
are error correcting codes with the extra property that, in order
to retrieve the correct value of just one position of the input with
high probability, it is
sufficient to read a small number of
positions of the corresponding,
possibly corrupted ... more >>>

Property testing is a relaxation of decision problems
in which it is required to distinguish {\sc yes}-instances
(i.e., objects having a predetermined property) from instances
that are far from any {\sc yes}-instance.
We presents three theorems regarding testing graph
properties in the adjacency matrix representation. ... more >>>

We provide an exposition of three Lemmas which relate
general properties of distributions
with the exclusive-or of certain bit locations.

The first XOR-Lemma, commonly attributed to U.V. Vazirani,
relates the statistical distance of a distribution from uniform
to the maximum bias of the xor of certain bit positions.
more >>>

We prove that computing a Nash equilibrium in a 3-player
game is PPAD-complete, solving a problem left open in our recent result on the complexity of Nash equilibria.

We study non-Boolean PCPs that have perfect completeness and read
three positions from the proof. For the case when the proof consists
of values from a domain of size d for some integer constant d
>= 2, we construct a non-adaptive PCP with perfect completeness
more >>>

We continue the study of constructing explicit extractors for independent
general weak random sources. The ultimate goal is to give a construction that matches what is given by the probabilistic method --- an extractor for two independent $n$-bit weak random sources with min-entropy as small as $\log n+O(1)$. Previously, the ... more >>>

We prove that for every $n$ and $1 < t < n$ any $t$-out-of-$n$ threshold secret sharing scheme for one-bit secrets requires share size $\log(t + 1)$. Our bound is tight when $t = n - 1$ and $n$ is a prime power. In 1990 Kilian and Nisan proved ... more >>>

We establish almost tight upper and lower approximation bounds for the Vertex Cover problem on dense k-partite hypergraphs.

Suppose Alice holds a uniformly random string $X \in \{0,1\}^N$ and Bob holds a noisy version $Y$ of $X$ where each bit of $X$ is flipped independently with probability $\epsilon \in [0,1/2]$. Alice and Bob would like to extract a common random string of min-entropy at least $k$. In this ... more >>>

Let $\Pi$ be a protocol over the $n$-party broadcast channel, where in each round, a pre-specified party broadcasts a symbol to all other parties. We wish to design a scheme that takes such a protocol $\Pi$ as input and outputs a noise resilient protocol $\Pi'$ that simulates $\Pi$ over the ... more >>>

We prove tight size bounds on monotone switching networks for the NP-complete problem of
$k$-clique, and for an explicit monotone problem by analyzing a pyramid structure of height $h$ for
the P-complete problem of generation. This gives alternative proofs of the separations of m-NC
from m-P and of m-NC$^i$ from ... more >>>

We investigate the randomized and quantum communication complexities of the well-studied Equality function with small error probability $\epsilon$, getting the optimal constant factors in the leading terms in a number of different models.

The following are our results in the randomized model:

1) We give a general technique to convert ... more >>>

The Zig-Zag product of two graphs, $Z = G \circ H$, was introduced in the seminal work of Reingold, Vadhan, and Wigderson (Ann. of Math. 2002) and has since become a pivotal tool in theoretical computer science. The classical bound, which is used throughout, states that the spectral expansion of ... more >>>

We bound the minimum number $w$ of wires needed to compute any (asymptotically good) error-correcting code
$C:\{0,1\}^{\Omega(n)} \to \{0,1\}^n$ with minimum distance $\Omega(n)$,
using unbounded fan-in circuits of depth $d$ with arbitrary gates. Our main results are:

(1) If $d=2$ then $w = \Theta(n ({\log n/ \log \log n})^2)$.

(2) ... more >>>

Nisan and Szegedy conjectured that block sensitivity is at most
polynomial in sensitivity for any Boolean function.
Until a recent breakthrough of Huang, the conjecture had been
wide open in the general case,
and was proved only for a few special classes
of Boolean functions.
Huang's result implies that block ... more >>>

We study the approximability of two natural Boolean constraint satisfaction problems: Horn satisfiability and exact hitting set. Under the Unique Games conjecture, we prove the following optimal inapproximability and approximability results for finding an assignment satisfying as many constraints as possible given a {\em
near-satisfiable} instance.

\begin{enumerate}
\item ... more >>>

We give tight bounds on the degree $\ell$ homogenous parts $f_\ell$ of a bounded function $f$ on the cube. We show that if $f: \{\pm 1\}^n \rightarrow [-1,1]$ has degree $d$, then $\| f_\ell \|_\infty$ is bounded by $d^\ell/\ell!$, and $\| \hat{f}_\ell \|_1$ is bounded by $d^\ell e^{{\ell+1 \choose 2}} ... more >>>

We show that $AC^0$ circuits of depth $d$ and size $m$ have at most $2^{-\Omega(k/(\log m)^{d-1})}$ of their Fourier mass at level $k$ or above. Our proof builds on a previous result by H{\aa}stad (SICOMP, 2014) who proved this bound for the special case $k=n$. Our result is tight up ... more >>>

We study the communication complexity of symmetric XOR functions, namely functions $f: \{0,1\}^n \times \{0,1\}^n \rightarrow \{0,1\}$ that can be formulated as $f(x,y)=D(|x\oplus y|)$ for some predicate $D: \{0,1,...,n\} \rightarrow \{0,1\}$, where $|x\oplus y|$ is the Hamming weight of the bitwise XOR of $x$ and $y$. We give a public-coin ... more >>>

This paper studies lower bounds for arithmetic circuits computing (non-commutative) polynomials. Our conceptual contribution is an exact correspondence between circuits and weighted automata: algebraic branching programs are captured by weighted automata over words, and circuits with unique parse trees by weighted automata over trees.

The key notion for understanding the ... more >>>

Assume that $X_0,X_1$ (respectively $Y_0,Y_1$) are $d_X$ (respectively $d_Y$) indistinguishable for circuits of a given size. It is well known that the product distributions $X_0Y_0,\,X_1Y_1$ are $d_X+d_Y$ indistinguishable for slightly smaller circuits. However, in probability theory where unbounded adversaries are considered through statistical distance, it is folklore knowledge that in ... more >>>

We initiate the study of generalized $AC^0$ circuits comprised of arbitrary unbounded fan-in gates which only need to be constant over inputs of Hamming weight $\ge k$ (up to negations of the input bits), which we denote $GC^0(k)$. The gate set of this class includes biased LTFs like the $k$-$OR$ ... more >>>

We study linear programming relaxations of Vertex Cover and Max Cut
arising from repeated applications of the ``lift-and-project''
method of Lovasz and Schrijver starting from the standard linear
programming relaxation.

For Vertex Cover, Arora, Bollobas, Lovasz and Tourlakis prove that
the integrality gap remains at least $2-\epsilon$ after
$\Omega_\epsilon(\log n)$ ... more >>>

We prove that the integrality gap after tightening the standard LP relaxation for Vertex Cover with Omega(sqrt(log n/log log n)) rounds of the SDP LS+ system is 2-o(1).

A Locally Correctable Code (LCC) is an error correcting code that has a probabilistic
self-correcting algorithm that, with high probability, can correct any coordinate of the
codeword by looking at only a few other coordinates, even if a fraction $\delta$ of the
coordinates are corrupted. LCC's are a stronger form ... more >>>

Linearity tests are randomized algorithms which have oracle access to the truth table of some function $f$,
which are supposed to distinguish between linear functions and functions which are far from linear. Linearity tests were first introduced by Blum, Luby and Rubenfeld in \cite{BLR93}, and were later used in the ... more >>>

We study lower bounds for testing membership in families of linear/affine-invariant Boolean functions over the hypercube. A family of functions $P\subseteq \{\{0,1\}^n \rightarrow \{0,1\}\}$ is linear/affine invariant if for any $f\in P$, it is the case that $f\circ L\in P$ for any linear/affine transformation $L$ of the domain. Motivated by ... more >>>

In the {\sc $k$-center} problem, the input is a bound $k$
and $n$ points with the distance between every two of them,
such that the distances obey the triangle inequality.
The goal is to choose a set of $k$ points to serve as centers,
so that the maximum distance ... more >>>

We prove tight network topology dependent bounds on the round complexity of computing well studied $k$-party functions such as set disjointness and element distinctness. Unlike the usual case in the CONGEST model in distributed computing, we fix the function and then vary the underlying network topology. This complements the recent ... more >>>

Following Hastad, Pass, Pietrzak, and Wikstrom (2008), we study parallel repetition theorems for public-coin interactive arguments and their generalization. We obtain the following results:

1. We show that the reduction of Hastad et al. actually gives a tight direct product theorem for public-coin interactive arguments. That is, $n$-fold parallel repetition ... more >>>

In function inversion, we are given a function $f: [N] \mapsto [N]$, and want to prepare some advice of size $S$, such that we can efficiently invert any image in time $T$. This is a well studied problem with profound connections to cryptography, data structures, communication complexity, and circuit lower ... more >>>

We exhibit families of 4-CNF formulas over n variables that have sums-of-squares (SOS) proofs of unsatisfiability of degree (a.k.a. rank) d but require SOS proofs of size n^{Omega(d)} for values of d = d(n) from constant all the way up to n^{delta} for some universal constant delta. This shows that ... more >>>

In the coin problem we are asked to distinguish, with probability at least $2/3$, between $n$ $i.i.d.$ coins which are heads with probability $\frac{1}{2}+\beta$ from ones which are heads with probability $\frac{1}{2}-\beta$. We are interested in the space complexity of the coin problem, corresponding to the width of a read-once ... more >>>

In this paper, we study the static cell probe complexity of non-adaptive data structures that maintain a subset of $n$ points from a universe consisting of $m=n^{1+\Omega(1)}$ points. A data structure is defined to be non-adaptive when the memory locations that are chosen to be accessed during a query depend ... more >>>

In his seminal work, Cleve [STOC 1986] has proved that any r-round coin-flipping protocol can be efficiently biassed by ?(1/r). The above lower bound was met for the two-party case by Moran, Naor, and Segev [Journal of Cryptology '16], and the three-party case (up to a polylog factor) by Haitner ... more >>>

We prove for some constant $a > 1$, for all $k \leq a$,
$$\mathbf{MATIME}[n^{k + o(1)}] / 1 \not \subset \mathbf{SIZE}[O(n^{k})],$$
for some specific $o(1)$ function. This improves on the Santhanam lower bound, which says there exists constant $c$ such that for all $k > 1$:
$$\mathbf{MATIME}[n^{c k}] / 1 ... more >>>

Sensitivity conjecture is a longstanding and fundamental open problem in the area of complexity measures of Boolean functions and decision tree complexity. The conjecture postulates that the maximum sensitivity of a Boolean function is polynomially related to other major complexity measures. Despite much attention to the problem and major advances ... more >>>

Time efficient decoding algorithms for error correcting codes often require linear space. However, locally decodable codes yield more efficient randomized decoders that run in time $n^{1+o(1)}$ and space $n^{o(1)}$. In this work we focus on deterministic decoding.
Gronemeier showed that any non-adaptive deterministic decoder for a good code running ... more >>>

A polynomial time hierarchy for ZPTime with one bit of advice is proved. That is for any constants a and b such that 1 < a < b, ZPTime[n^a]/1 \subsetneq ZPTime[n^b]/1.

The technique introduced in this paper is very general and gives the same hierarchy for NTime \cap coNTime, UTime, ... more >>>

We prove a time hierarchy theorem for inverting functions
computable in polynomial time with one bit of advice.
In particular, we prove that if there is a strongly
one-way function, then for any k and for any polynomial p,
there is a function f computable in linear time
with one ... more >>>

We prove that for every constant $k\ge 2$, every polynomial time bound $t$, and every polynomially small $\epsilon$, there exists a family of distributions on $k$ elements that can be sampled exactly in polynomial time but cannot be sampled within statistical distance $1-1/k-\epsilon$ in time $t$. Our proof involves reducing ... more >>>

We survey time hierarchies, with an emphasis on recent attempts to prove hierarchies for semantic classes.

We show that under a reasonable hardness assumptions, the time-bounded Kolmogorov distribution is a universal samplable distribution. Under the same assumption we exactly characterize the worst-case running time of languages that are in average polynomial-time over all P-samplable distributions.

We give two time- and space-efficient simulations of quantum computations with
intermediate measurements, one by classical randomized computations with
unbounded error and the other by quantum computations that use an arbitrary
fixed universal set of gates. Specifically, our simulations show that every
language solvable by a bounded-error quantum algorithm running ... more >>>

We define a concept class ${\cal F}$ to be time-space hard (or memory-samples hard) if any learning algorithm for ${\cal F}$ requires either a memory of size super-linear in $n$ or a number of samples super-polynomial in $n$, where $n$ is the length of one sample.

A recent work shows ... more >>>

The random-query model was introduced by Raz and Zhan at ITCS 2020 as a new model of space-bounded computation. In this model, a branching program of length $T$ and width $2^{S}$ attempts to compute a function $f:\{0,1\}^n \rightarrow \{0,1 \}$. However, instead of receiving direct access to the input bits ... more >>>

A line of recent works showed that for a large class of learning problems, any learning algorithm requires either super-linear memory size or a super-polynomial number of samples [Raz16,KRT17,Raz17,MM18,BOGY18,GRT18]. For example, any algorithm for learning parities of size $n$ requires either a memory of size $\Omega(n^{2})$ or an exponential number ... more >>>

We prove that for every $\alpha \in [1,1.5]$,
$$
\text{BPSPACE}[S]\subseteq \text{TISP}[2^{S^{\alpha}},S^{3-\alpha}]
$$
where $\text{BPSPACE}[S]$ corresponds to randomized space $O(S)$ computation, and $\text{TISP}[T,S]$ to time $poly(T)$, space $O(S)$ computation. Our result smoothly interpolates between the results of (Nisan STOC 1992) and (Saks and Zhou FOCS 1995), which prove $\text{BPSPACE}[S]$ is contained ... more >>>

We obtain the first non-trivial time-space tradeoff lower bound for
functions f:{0,1}^n ->{0,1} on general branching programs by exhibiting a
Boolean function f that requires exponential size to be computed by any
branching program of length cn, for some constant c>1. We also give the first
separation result between the ... more >>>

We prove the first time-space tradeoffs for counting the number of solutions to an NP problem modulo small integers, and also improve upon the known time-space tradeoffs for Sat. Let m be a positive integer, and define MODm-Sat to be the problem of determining if a given Boolean formula has ... more >>>

We develop an extension of recent analytic methods for obtaining time-space tradeoff lower bounds for problems of learning from uniformly random labelled examples. With our methods we can obtain bounds for learning concept classes of finite functions from random evaluations even when the sample space of random inputs can be ... more >>>

We develop an extension of recently developed methods for obtaining time-space tradeoff lower bounds for problems of learning from random test samples to handle the situation where the space of tests is signficantly smaller than the space of inputs, a class of learning problems that is not handled by prior ... more >>>

We show new tradeoffs for satisfiability and nondeterministic
linear time. Satisfiability cannot be solved on general purpose
random-access Turing machines in time $n^{1.618}$ and space
$n^{o(1)}$. This improves recent results of Lipton and Viglas and
Fortnow.

A decade has passed since Alekhnovich and Razborov presented an algorithm that solves SAT on instances $\phi$ of size $n$ having tree-width $TW(\phi)$, using time (and space) bounded by $2^{O(TW(\phi))}n^{O(1)}$. Although there have been several papers over the ensuing years building on the work of Alekhnovich and Razborov there has ... more >>>

We give the first time-space tradeoff lower bounds for Resolution proofs that apply to superlinear space. In particular, we show that there are formulas of size $N$ that have Resolution refutations of space and size each roughly $N^{\log_2 N}$ (and like all formulas have Resolution refutations of space $N$) for ... more >>>

We extend the lower bound techniques of [Fortnow], to the
unbounded-error probabilistic model. A key step in the argument
is a generalization of Nepomnjascii's theorem from the Boolean
setting to the arithmetic setting. This generalization is made
possible, due to the recent discovery of logspace-uniform TC^0
more >>>

We present three explicit constructions of hash functions,
which exhibit a trade-off between the size of the family
(and hence the number of random bits needed to generate a member of the family),
and the quality (or error parameter) of the pseudo-random property it
achieves. Unlike previous constructions, ... more >>>

We study the computational power of polynomial threshold functions, that is, threshold functions of real polynomials over the boolean cube. We provide two new results bounding the computational power of this model.
Our first result shows that low-degree polynomial threshold functions cannot approximate any function with many influential variables. We ... more >>>

The function $f\colon \{-1,1\}^n \to \{-1,1\}$ is a $k$-junta if it depends on at most $k$ of its variables. We consider the problem of tolerant testing of $k$-juntas, where the testing algorithm must accept any function that is $\epsilon$-close to some $k$-junta and reject any function that is $\epsilon'$-far from ... more >>>

An error-correcting code is said to be {\em locally testable} if it has an
efficient spot-checking procedure that can distinguish codewords
from strings that are far from every codeword, looking at very few
locations of the input in doing so. Locally testable codes (LTCs) have
generated ... more >>>

A standard property testing algorithm is required to determine
with high probability whether a given object has property
P or whether it is \epsilon-far from having P, for any given
distance parameter \epsilon. An object is said to be \epsilon-far
from having ... more >>>

A property tester with high probability accepts inputs satisfying a given property and rejects
inputs that are far from satisfying it. A tolerant property tester, as defined by Parnas, Ron
and Rubinfeld, must also accept inputs that are close enough to satisfying the property. We
construct properties of binary functions ... more >>>

Consider the following heuristic for building a decision tree for a function $f : \{0,1\}^n \to \{\pm 1\}$. Place the most influential variable $x_i$ of $f$ at the root, and recurse on the subfunctions $f_{x_i=0}$ and $f_{x_i=1}$ on the left and right subtrees respectively; terminate once the tree is an ... more >>>

We present a top-down lower-bound method for depth-$4$ boolean circuits. In particular, we give a new proof of the well-known result that the parity function requires depth-$4$ circuits of size exponential in $n^{1/3}$. Our proof is an application of robust sunflowers and block unpredictability.

The approximate graph colouring problem concerns colouring a $k$-colourable
graph with $c$ colours, where $c\geq k$. This problem naturally generalises
to promise graph homomorphism and further to promise constraint satisfaction
problems. Complexity analysis of all these problems is notoriously difficult.
In this paper, we introduce ... more >>>

We show that ACC^0 is precisely what can be computed with constant-width circuits of polynomial size and polylogarithmic genus. This extends a characterization given by Hansen, showing that planar constant-width circuits also characterize ACC^0. Thus polylogarithmic genus provides no additional computational power in this model.
We consider other generalizations of ... more >>>

We provide the first communication lower bounds that are sensitive to the network topology for computing natural and simple functions by point to point message passing protocols for the `Number in Hand' model. All previous lower bounds were either for the broadcast model or assumed full connectivity of the network. ... more >>>

We propose an algebraic approach to proving circuit lower bounds for ACC0 by defining and studying the notion of torus polynomials. We show how currently known polynomial-based approximation results for AC0 and ACC0 can be reformulated in this framework, implying that ACC0 can be approximated by low-degree torus polynomials. Furthermore, ... more >>>

We identify several genres of search problems beyond NP for which existence of solutions is guaranteed. One class that seems especially rich in such problems is PEPP (for "polynomial empty pigeonhole principle"), which includes problems related to existence theorems proved through the union bound, such as finding a bit string ... more >>>

We show $\Omega(n^2)$ lower bounds on the total space used in resolution refutations of random $k$-CNFs over $n$ variables, and of the graph pigeonhole principle and the bit pigeonhole principle for $n$ holes. This answers the long-standing open problem of whether there are families of $k$-CNF formulas of size $O(n)$ ... more >>>

Given an unsatisfiable $k$-CNF formula $\phi$ we consider two complexity measures in Resolution: width and total space. The width is the minimal $W$ such that there exists a Resolution refutation of $\phi$ with clauses of at most $W$ literals. The total space is the minimal size $T$ of a memory ... more >>>

In this paper, we establish a novel connection between total variation (TV) distance estimation and probabilistic inference. In particular, we present an efficient, structure-preserving reduction from relative approximation of TV distance to probabilistic inference over directed graphical models. This reduction leads to a fully polynomial randomized approximation scheme (FPRAS) for ... more >>>

We introduce em total wire length as salient complexity measure
for analyzing the circuit complexity of sensory processing in
biological neural systems and neuromorphic engineering. The new
complexity measure is applied in this paper to two basic
computational problems that arise in translation- and
scale-invariant pattern recognition, and hence appear ... more >>>

We propose a model called priority branching trees (pBT ) for backtracking and dynamic
programming algorithms. Our model generalizes both the priority model of Borodin, Nielson
and Rackoff, as well as a simple dynamic programming model due to Woeginger, and hence
spans a wide spectrum of algorithms. After witnessing the ... more >>>

One of the major open problems in complexity theory is proving super-logarithmic lower bounds on the depth of circuits (i.e., $\mathbf{P}\not\subseteq \mathbf{NC}^{1}$). Karchmer, Raz, and Wigderson (Computational Complexity 5(3/4), 1995) suggested to approach this problem by proving that depth complexity of a composition of functions $f \diamond g$ is roughly ... more >>>

In this paper, we propose a new conjecture, the XOR-KRW conjecture, which is a relaxation of the Karchmer-Raz-Wigderson conjecture [KRW95]. This relaxation is still strong enough to imply $\mathbf{P} \not\subseteq \mathbf{NC}^1$ if proven. We also present a weaker version of this conjecture that might be used for breaking $n^3$ lower ... more >>>

One of the major open problems in complexity theory is proving super-logarithmic
lower bounds on the depth of circuits (i.e., $\mathbf{P}\not\subseteq\mathbf{NC}^1$). Karchmer, Raz, and Wigderson (Computational Complexity 5, 3/4) suggested to approach this problem by proving that depth complexity behaves "as expected" with respect to the composition of functions $f ... more >>>

One of the major open problems in complexity theory is proving super-polynomial lower bounds for circuits with logarithmic depth (i.e., $\mathbf{P}\not\subseteq\mathbf{NC}_1~$). This problem is interesting for two reasons: first, it is tightly related to understanding the power of parallel computation and of small-space computation; second, it is one of the ... more >>>

Non-signaling strategies are a generalization of quantum strategies that have been studied in physics over the past three decades. Recently, they have found applications in theoretical computer science, including to proving inapproximability results for linear programming and to constructing protocols for delegating computation. A central tool for these applications is ... more >>>

One of the major challenges of the research in circuit complexity is proving super-polynomial lower bounds for de-Morgan formulas. Karchmer, Raz, and Wigderson suggested to approach this problem by proving that formula complexity behaves "as expected'' with respect to the composition of functions $f\circ g$. They showed that this conjecture, ... more >>>

We show that there exists a Boolean function $F$ which observes the following separations among deterministic query complexity $(D(F))$, randomized zero error query complexity $(R_0(F))$
and randomized one-sided error query complexity $(R_1(F))$: $R_1(F) = \widetilde{O}(\sqrt{D(F)})$ and $R_0(F)=\widetilde{O}(D(F))^{3/4}$. This refutes the conjecture made by
Saks and Wigderson that for any Boolean ... more >>>

A Boolean constraint satisfaction problem (CSP) is called approximation resistant if independently setting variables to $1$ with some probability $\alpha$ achieves the best possible approximation ratio for the fraction of constraints satisfied. We study approximation resistance of a natural subclass of CSPs that we call Symmetric Constraint Satisfaction Problems (SCSPs), ... more >>>

We propose a combinatorial hypothesis regarding a subspace vs. subspace agreement test, and prove that if correct it leads to a proof of the 2-to-1 Games Conjecture, albeit with imperfect completeness.

Newman’s theorem states that we can take any public-coin communication protocol and convert it into one that uses only private randomness with only a little increase in communication complexity. We consider a reversed scenario in the context of information complexity: can we take a protocol that uses private randomness and ... more >>>

The complexity class TFNP is the set of {\em total function} problems that belong to NP: every input has at least one output and outputs are easy to check for validity, but it may be hard to find an output. TFNP is not believed to have complete problems, but it ... more >>>

The class $ACC$ consists of Boolean functions that can be computed by constant-depth circuits of polynomial size with $AND, NOT$ and $MOD_m$ gates, where $m$ is a natural number. At the frontier of our understanding lies a widely believed conjecture asserting that $MAJORITY$ does not belong to $ACC$. The Boolean ... more >>>

We observe that a certain kind of algebraic proof - which covers essentially all known algebraic circuit lower bounds to date - cannot be used to prove lower bounds against VP if and only if what we call succinct hitting sets exist for VP. This is analogous to the Razborov-Rudich ... more >>>

In \cite{shenpapier82}, it is shown that four basic functional properties are enough to characterize plain Kolmogorov complexity, hence obtaining an axiomatic characterization of this notion. In this paper, we try to extend this work, both by looking at alternative axiomatic systems for plain complexity and by considering potential axiomatic systems ... more >>>

We construct a PCP based on the hyper-graph linearity test with 3 free queries. It has near-perfect completeness and soundness strictly less than 1/8. Such a PCP was known before only assuming the Unique Games Conjecture, albeit with soundness arbitrarily close to 1/16.

At a technical level, our ... more >>>

Most state-of-the-art satisfiability algorithms today are variants of
the DPLL procedure augmented with clause learning. The main bottleneck
for such algorithms, other than the obvious one of time, is the amount
of memory used. In the field of proof complexity, the resources of
time and memory correspond to the length ... more >>>

We present in this paper some of the recent techniques and methods for proving best up to now explicit approximation hardness bounds for metric symmetric and asymmetric Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) as well as related problems of Shortest Superstring and Maximum Compression. We attempt to shed some light on the ... more >>>

Derandomization of blackbox identity testing reduces to extremely special circuit models. After a line of work, it is known that focusing on circuits with constant-depth and constantly many variables is enough (Agrawal,Ghosh,Saxena, STOC'18) to get to general hitting-sets and circuit lower bounds. This inspires us to study circuits with few ... more >>>

We show that it is possible to encode any communication protocol
between two parties so that the protocol succeeds even if a $(1/4 -
\epsilon)$ fraction of all symbols transmitted by the parties are
corrupted adversarially, at a cost of increasing the communication in
the protocol by a constant factor ... more >>>

We design a deterministic subexponential time algorithm that takes as input a multivariate polynomial $f$ computed by a constant-depth circuit over rational numbers, and outputs a list $L$ of circuits (of unbounded depth and possibly with division gates) that contains all irreducible factors of $f$ computable by constant-depth circuits. This ... more >>>

We present a deterministic operator on tree codes -- we call tree code product -- that allows one to deterministically combine two tree codes into a larger tree code. Moreover, if the original tree codes are efficiently encodable and decodable, then so is their product. This allows us to give ... more >>>

In this paper we study the problem of explicitly constructing a
{\em dimension expander} raised by \cite{BISW}: Let $\mathbb{F}^n$
be the $n$ dimensional linear space over the field $\mathbb{F}$.
Find a small (ideally constant) set of linear transformations from
$\F^n$ to itself $\{A_i\}_{i \in I}$ such that for every linear
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The efficient construction of Hitting Sets for non trivial classes
of boolean functions is a fundamental problem in the theory
of derandomization. Our paper presents a new method to efficiently
construct Hitting Sets for the class of systems of boolean linear
functions. Systems of boolean linear functions ... more >>>

We consider the envy-free pricing problem, in which we want to compute revenue maximizing prices for a set of products P assuming that each consumer from a set of consumer samples C will buy the product maximizing her personal utility, i.e., the difference between her respective budget and the product's ... more >>>

An arithmetic formula is an arithmetic circuit where each gate has fan-out one. An \emph{arithmetic read-once formula} (ROF in short) is an arithmetic formula where each input variable labels at most one leaf. In this paper we present several efficient blackbox \emph{polynomial identity testing} (PIT) algorithms for some classes of ... more >>>

The main open problem in the area of locally testable codes (LTCs) is whether there exists an asymptotically good family of LTCs and to resolve this question it suffices to consider the case of query complexity $3$. We argue that to refute the existence of such an asymptotically good family ... more >>>

We consider the Max-Cut problem, asking how much space is needed by a streaming algorithm in order to estimate the value of the maximum cut in a graph. This problem has been extensively studied over the last decade, and we now have a near-optimal lower bound for one-pass streaming algorithms, ... more >>>

We show that any $n$-variate polynomial computable by a syntactically multilinear circuit of size $\mathop{poly}(n)$ can be computed by a depth-$4$ syntactically multilinear ($\Sigma\Pi\Sigma\Pi$) circuit of size at most $\exp\left({O\left(\sqrt{n\log n}\right)}\right)$. For degree $d = \omega(n/\log n)$, this improves upon the upper bound of $\exp\left({O(\sqrt{d}\log n)}\right)$ obtained by Tavenas (MFCS ... more >>>

Classical results of Brent, Kuck and Maruyama (IEEE Trans. Computers 1973) and Brent (JACM 1974) show that any algebraic formula of size s can be converted to one of depth O(log s) with only a polynomial blow-up in size. In this paper, we consider a fine-grained version of this result ... more >>>

We study \emph{efficient, deterministic} interactive coding schemes that simulate any interactive protocol both under random and adversarial errors, and can achieve a constant communication rate independent of the protocol length.

For channels that flip bits independently with probability~$\epsilon<1/2$, our coding scheme achieves a communication rate of $1 - O(\sqrt{H({\epsilon})})$ and ... more >>>

The query model offers a concrete setting where quantum algorithms are provably superior to randomized algorithms. Beautiful results by Bernstein-Vazirani, Simon, Aaronson, and others presented partial Boolean functions that can be computed by quantum algorithms making much fewer queries compared to their randomized analogs. To date, separations of $O(1)$ vs. ... more >>>

We give a new approach to the fundamental question of whether proof complexity lower bounds for concrete propositional proof systems imply super-polynomial Boolean circuit lower bounds.

For any poly-time computable function $f$, we define the witnessing formulas $w_n^k(f)$, which are propositional formulas stating that for any circuit $C$ of size ... more >>>

A fundamental question of complexity theory is the direct product
question. Namely weather the assumption that a function $f$ is hard on
average for some computational class (meaning that every algorithm from
the class has small advantage over random guessing when computing $f$)
entails that computing $f$ on ... more >>>

In this paper, we study the problem of computing the majority function by low-depth monotone circuits and a related problem of constructing low-depth sorting networks. We consider both the classical setting with elementary operations of arity $2$ and the generalized setting with operations of arity $k$, where $k$ is a ... more >>>

Lovasz and Schrijver described a generic method of tightening the LP and SDP relaxation for any 0-1 optimization problem. These tightened relaxations were the basis of several celebrated approximation algorithms (such as for MAX-CUT, MAX-3SAT, and SPARSEST CUT).

We prove strong nonapproximability results in this model for well-known problems such ... more >>>

We give improved separations for the query complexity analogue of the log-approximate-rank conjecture i.e. we show that there are a plethora of total Boolean functions on $n$ input bits, each of which has approximate Fourier sparsity at most $O(n^3)$ and randomized parity decision tree complexity $\Theta(n)$. This improves upon the ... more >>>

A fundamental problem in circuit complexity is to find explicit functions that require large depth to compute. When considering the natural DeMorgan basis of $\{\text{OR},\text{AND}\}$, where negations incur no cost, the best known depth lower bounds for an explicit function in NP have the form $(3-o(1))\log_2 n$, established by H{\aa}stad ... more >>>

Entanglement is an essential resource for quantum communication and quantum computation, similar to shared random bits in the classical world. Entanglement distillation extracts nearly-perfect entanglement from imperfect entangled state. The classical communication complexity of these protocols is the minimal amount of classical information that needs to be exchanged for the ... more >>>

The investigation of the possibility to efficiently compute
approximations of hard optimization problems is one of the central
and most fruitful areas of current algorithm and complexity theory.
The aim of this paper is twofold. First, we introduce the notion of
stability of approximation algorithms. This notion is shown to ... more >>>

We pioneer a new technique that allows us to prove a multitude of previously open simulations in QBF proof complexity. In particular, we show that extended QBF Frege p-simulates clausal proof systems such as IR-Calculus, IRM-Calculus, Long-Distance Q-Resolution, and Merge Resolution.
These results are obtained by taking a technique ... more >>>

Littlestone developed a simple deterministic on-line learning
algorithm for learning $k$-literal disjunctions. This algorithm
(called Winnow) keeps one weight for each variable and does
multiplicative updates to its weights. We develop a randomized
version of Winnow and prove bounds for an adaptation of the
algorithm ... more >>>

It is well known that coset-generating relations lead to tractable
constraint satisfaction problems. These are precisely the relations closed
under the operation $xy^{-1}z$ where the multiplication is taken in
some finite group. Bulatov et al. have on the other hand shown that
any clone containing the multiplication of some ``block-group'' ... more >>>

The Constraint Satisfaction Problem (CSP) provides a common framework for many combinatorial problems. The general CSP is known to be NP-complete; however, certain restrictions on a possible form of constraints may affect the complexity, and lead to tractable problem classes. There is, therefore, a fundamental research direction, aiming to separate ... more >>>

The classic TQBF problem can be viewed as a game in which two players alternate turns assigning truth values to a CNF formula's variables in a prescribed order, and the winner is determined by whether the CNF gets satisfied. The complexity of deciding which player has a winning strategy in ... more >>>

We study the advantages of quantum communication models over classical communication models that are equipped with a limited number of qubits of entanglement. In this direction, we give explicit partial functions on $n$ bits for which reducing the entanglement increases the classical communication complexity exponentially. Our separations are as follows. ... more >>>

Let $X=X_1\sqcup X_2\sqcup\ldots\sqcup X_k$ be a partitioned set of variables such that the variables in each part $X_i$ are noncommuting but for any $i\neq j$, the variables $x \in X_i$ commute with the variables $x' \in X_j$. Given as input a square matrix $T$ whose entries are linear forms over ... more >>>

Savitch showed in $1970$ that nondeterministic logspace (NL) is contained in deterministic $\mathcal{O}(\log^2 n)$ space but his algorithm requires quasipolynomial time. The question whether we can have a deterministic algorithm for every problem in NL that requires polylogarithmic space and simultaneously runs in polynomial time was left open.
... more >>>

In this paper we develop techniques that eliminate the need of the Generalized
Riemann Hypothesis (GRH) from various (almost all) known results about deterministic
polynomial factoring over finite fields. Our main result shows that given a
polynomial f(x) of degree n over a finite field k, we ... more >>>

We consider the standard two-party communication model. The central problem studied in this article is how much one can save in information complexity by allowing an error of $\epsilon$.
For arbitrary functions, we obtain lower bounds and upper bounds indicating a gain that is of order $\Omega(h(\epsilon))$ and $O(h(\sqrt{\epsilon}))$. ... more >>>

We show here that every non-adaptive property testing algorithm making a constant number of queries, over a fixed alphabet, can be converted to a sample-based (as per [Goldreich and Ron, 2015]) testing algorithm whose average number of queries is a fixed, smaller than $1$, power of $n$. Since the query ... more >>>

We construct the first constant time value approximation schemes (CTASs) for Metric and Quasi-Metric MAX-rCSP problems for any $r \ge 2$ in a preprocessed metric model of computation, improving over the previous results of [FKKV05] proven for the general core-dense MAX-rCSP problems. They entail also the first sublinear approximation schemes ... more >>>

An $m$-catalytic branching program (Girard, Koucky, McKenzie 2015) is a set of $m$ distinct branching programs for $f$ which are permitted to share internal (i.e. non-source non-sink) nodes. While originally introduced as a non-uniform analogue to catalytic space, this also gives a natural notion of amortized non-uniform space complexity for ... more >>>

Given a directed graph $G = (V,E)$ and an integer $k \geq 1$, a $k$-transitive-closure-spanner ($k$-TC-spanner) of $G$ is a directed graph $H = (V, E_H)$ that has (1) the same transitive-closure as $G$ and (2) diameter at most $k$. Transitive-closure spanners were introduced in \cite{tc-spanners-soda} as a common abstraction ... more >>>

Recently Hrubes and Yehudayoff (2021) showed a connection between the monotone algebraic circuit complexity of \emph{transparent} polynomials and a geometric complexity measure of their Newton polytope. They then used this connection to prove lower bounds against monotone VP (mVP). We extend their work by showing that their technique can be ... more >>>

We show how to construct a variety of ``trapdoor'' cryptographic tools
assuming the worst-case hardness of standard lattice problems (such as
approximating the shortest nonzero vector to within small factors).
The applications include trapdoor functions with \emph{preimage
sampling}, simple and efficient ``hash-and-sign'' digital signature
schemes, universally composable oblivious transfer, ... more >>>

The Tree Evaluation Problem ($TreeEval$) (Cook et al. 2009) is a central candidate for separating polynomial time ($P$) from logarithmic space ($L$) via composition. While space lower bounds of $\Omega(\log^2 n)$ are known for multiple restricted models, it was recently shown by Cook and Mertz (2020) that TreeEval can be ... more >>>

For a fixed "pattern" graph $G$, the $\textit{colored}$ $G\textit{-subgraph isomorphism problem}$ (denoted $\mathrm{SUB}(G)$) asks, given an $n$-vertex graph $H$ and a coloring $V(H) \to V(G)$, whether $H$ contains a properly colored copy of $G$. The complexity of this problem is tied to parameterized versions of $\mathit{P}$ ${=}?$ $\mathit{NP}$ and $\mathit{L}$ ... more >>>

We introduce tri-state circuits (TSCs). TSCs form a natural model of computation that, to our knowledge, has not been considered by theorists. The model captures a surprising combination of simplicity and power. TSCs are simple in that they allow only three wire values ($0$,$1$, and undefined – $Z$) and three ... more >>>

We consider the point-to-point message passing model of communication in which there are $k$ processors
with individual private inputs, each $n$-bit long. Each processor is located at the node of an underlying
undirected graph and has access to private random coins. An edge of the graph is a private channel ... more >>>

Many dynamic programming algorithms for discrete 0-1 optimization problems are just special (recursively constructed) tropical (min,+) or (max,+) circuits. A problem is homogeneous if all its feasible solutions have the same number of 1s. Jerrum and Snir [JACM 29 (1982), pp. 874-897] proved that tropical circuit complexity of homogeneous problems ... more >>>

Propositional proof complexity deals with the lengths of polynomial-time verifiable proofs for Boolean tautologies. An abundance of proof systems is known, including algebraic and semialgebraic systems, which work with polynomial equations and inequalities, respectively. The most basic algebraic proof system is based on Hilbert's Nullstellensatz (Beame et al., 1996). Tropical ... more >>>

We exhibit supercritical trade-off for monotone circuits, showing that there are functions computable by small circuits for which any circuit must have depth super-linear or even super-polynomial in the number of variables, far exceeding the linear worst-case upper bound. We obtain similar trade-offs in proof complexity, where we establish the ... more >>>

Disjoint NP-pairs are a well studied complexity theoretic concept with
important applications in cryptography and propositional proof
complexity.

In this paper we introduce a natural generalization of the notion of
disjoint NP-pairs to disjoint k-tuples of NP-sets for k>1.
We define subclasses of ... more >>>

We revisit the notion of a {\em targeted canonical derandomizer},
introduced in our recent ECCC Report (TR10-135) as a uniform notion of
a pseudorandom generator that suffices for yielding BPP=P.
The original notion was derived (as a variant of the standard notion
of a canonical derandomizer) by providing both ... more >>>

We show that the NP-Complete language 3Sat has a PCP
verifier that makes two queries to a proof of almost-linear size
and achieves sub-constant probability of error $o(1)$. The
verifier performs only projection tests, meaning that the answer
to the first query determines at most one accepting answer to the
more >>>

In the Coin Problem, one is given n independent flips of a coin that has bias $\beta > 0$ towards either Head or Tail. The goal is to decide which side the coin is biased towards, with high confidence. An optimal strategy for solving the coin problem is to apply ... more >>>

A long line of work in the past two decades or so established close connections between several different pseudorandom objects and applications, including seeded or seedless non-malleable extractors, two source extractors, (bipartite) Ramsey graphs, privacy amplification protocols with an active adversary, non-malleable codes and many more. These connections essentially show ... more >>>

In this paper, two structural results concerning low degree polynomials over the field $\mathbb{F}_2$ are given. The first states that for any degree d polynomial f in n variables, there exists a subspace of $\mathbb{F}_2^n$ with dimension $\Omega(n^{1/(d-1)})$ on which f is constant. This result is shown to be tight. ... more >>>

We prove the following results concerning the list decoding of error-correcting codes:

We show that for any code with a relative distance of $\delta$
(over a large enough alphabet), the
following result holds for random errors: With high probability,
for a $\rho\le \delta -\eps$ fraction of random errors (for any ... more >>>

A bipartite graph is biplanar if the vertices can be
placed on two parallel lines in the plane such that there are
no edge crossings when edges are drawn as straight-line segments.
We study two variants of biplanarization problems:
- Two-Layer Planarization TLP: can $k$ edges be deleted from
a ... more >>>

Loosely speaking, a proximity-oblivious (property) tester is a randomized algorithm that makes a constant number of queries to a tested object and distinguishes objects that have a predetermined property from those that lack it. Specifically, for some threshold probability $c$, objects having the property are accepted with probability at least ... more >>>

We present the first explicit construction of two-sided lossless expanders in the unbalanced setting (bipartite graphs that have many more nodes on the left than on the right). Prior to our work, all known explicit constructions in the unbalanced setting achieved only one-sided lossless expansion.

Specifically, we show ... more >>>

We introduce ``minimal'' two--sorted first--order theories VL, VSL, VNL and VP
that characterize the classes L, SL, NL and P in the same
way that Buss's $S^i_2$ hierarchy characterizes the polynomial time hierarchy.
Our theories arise from natural combinatorial problems, namely the st-Connectivity
Problem and the Circuit Value Problem.
It ... more >>>

In their seminal work, Chattopadhyay and Zuckerman (STOC'16) constructed a two-source extractor with error $\varepsilon$ for $n$-bit sources having min-entropy $poly\log(n/\varepsilon)$. Unfortunately, the construction running-time is $poly(n/\varepsilon)$, which means that with polynomial-time constructions, only polynomially-large errors are possible. Our main result is a $poly(n,\log(1/\varepsilon))$-time computable two-source condenser. For any $k ... more >>>

In his 1947 paper that inaugurated the probabilistic method, Erdös proved the existence of $2\log{n}$-Ramsey graphs on $n$ vertices. Matching Erdös' result with a constructive proof is a central problem in combinatorics, that has gained a significant attention in the literature. The state of the art result was obtained in ... more >>>

This paper offers the following contributions:

* We construct a two-source extractor for quasi-logarithmic min-entropy. That is, an extractor for two independent $n$-bit sources with min-entropy $\widetilde{O}(\log{n})$. Our construction is optimal up to $\mathrm{poly}(\log\log{n})$ factors and improves upon a recent result by Ben-Aroya, Doron, and Ta-Shma (ECCC'16) that can handle ... more >>>

Based on different concepts to obtain a finer notion of language recognition via finite monoids we develop an algebraic structure called typed monoid.
This leads to an algebraic description of regular and non regular languages.

We obtain for each language a unique minimal recognizing typed monoid, the typed syntactic monoid.
more >>>

$k$-SAT is one of the best known among a wide class of random
constraint satisfaction problems believed to exhibit a threshold
phenomenon where the control parameter is the ratio, number of
constraints to number of variables. There has been a large amount of
work towards estimating ... more >>>