Under the auspices of the Computational Complexity Foundation (CCF)

REPORTS > 2018:
All reports in year 2018:
TR18-052 | 16th March 2018
Chi-Ning Chou, Mrinal Kumar, Noam Solomon

#### Some Closure Results for Polynomial Factorization and Applications

In a sequence of fundamental results in the 80's, Kaltofen showed that factors of multivariate polynomials with small arithmetic circuits have small arithmetic circuits. In other words, the complexity class $VP$ is closed under taking factors. A natural question in this context is to understand if other natural classes of ... more >>>

TR18-051 | 15th March 2018
Stasys Jukna

#### Derandomizing Dynamic Programming and Beyond

We consider probabilistic circuits working over the real numbers, and using arbitrary semialgebraic functions of bounded description complexity as gates. We show that such circuits can be simulated by deterministic circuits with an only polynomial blowup in size. An algorithmic consequence is that randomization cannot substantially speed up dynamic programming. ... more >>>

TR18-050 | 15th March 2018
Irit Dinur, Oded Goldreich, Tom Gur

#### Every set in P is strongly testable under a suitable encoding

We show that every set in $\cal P$ is strongly testable under a suitable encoding. By strongly testable'' we mean having a (proximity oblivious) tester that makes a constant number of queries and rejects with probability that is proportional to the distance of the tested object from the property. By ... more >>>

TR18-049 | 14th March 2018
Stasys Jukna, Hannes Seiwert

#### Greedy can also beat pure dynamic programming

Many dynamic programming algorithms are pure'' in that they only use min or max and addition operations in their recursion equations. The well known greedy algorithm of Kruskal solves the minimum weight spanning tree problem on $n$-vertex graphs using only $O(n^2\log n)$ operations. We prove that any pure DP algorithm ... more >>>

TR18-048 | 11th March 2018
Ofer Grossman, Yang Liu

#### Reproducibility and Pseudo-Determinism in Log-Space

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

TR18-047 | 7th March 2018
Shachar Lovett

#### A proof of the GM-MDS conjecture

The GM-MDS conjecture of Dau et al. (ISIT 2014) speculates that the MDS condition, which guarantees the existence of MDS matrices with a prescribed set of zeros over large fields, is in fact sufficient for existence of such matrices over small fields. We prove this conjecture.

more >>>

TR18-046 | 9th March 2018
Oded Goldreich, Guy Rothblum

#### Counting $t$-cliques: Worst-case to average-case reductions and Direct interactive proof systems

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

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

TR18-045 | 6th March 2018
Oded Goldreich, Dana Ron

#### The Subgraph Testing Model

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 >>>

TR18-044 | 5th March 2018
Alessandro Chiesa, Michael Forbes, Tom Gur, Nicholas Spooner

#### Spatial Isolation Implies Zero Knowledge Even in a Quantum World

Zero knowledge plays a central role in cryptography and complexity. The seminal work of Ben-Or et al. (STOC 1988) shows that zero knowledge can be achieved unconditionally for any language in NEXP, as long as one is willing to make a suitable physical assumption: if the provers are spatially isolated, ... more >>>

TR18-043 | 22nd February 2018
Andrei Romashchenko, Marius Zimand

#### An operational characterization of mutual information in algorithmic information theory

We show that the mutual information, in the sense of Kolmogorov complexity, of any pair of strings
$x$ and $y$ is equal, up to logarithmic precision, to the length of the longest shared secret key that
two parties, one having $x$ and the complexity profile of the pair and the ... more >>>

TR18-042 | 1st March 2018
Stasys Jukna

#### Incremental versus Non-Incremental Dynamic Programming

Many dynamic programming algorithms for discrete optimization problems are "pure" in that they only use min/max and addition operations in their recursions. Some of them, in particular those for various shortest path problems, are even "incremental" in that one of the inputs to the addition operations is a variable. We ... more >>>

TR18-041 | 26th February 2018
Sam Buss, Dmitry Itsykson, Alexander Knop, Dmitry Sokolov

#### Reordering Rule Makes OBDD Proof Systems Stronger

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

TR18-040 | 21st February 2018
Marshall Ball, Dana Dachman-Soled, Siyao Guo, Tal Malkin, Li-Yang Tan

#### Non-Malleable Codes for Small-Depth Circuits

We construct efficient, unconditional non-malleable codes that are secure against tampering functions computed by small-depth circuits. For constant-depth circuits of polynomial size (i.e.~$\mathsf{AC^0}$ tampering functions), our codes have codeword length $n = k^{1+o(1)}$ for a $k$-bit message. This is an exponential improvement of the previous best construction due to Chattopadhyay ... more >>>

TR18-039 | 23rd February 2018
Md Lutfar Rahman, Thomas Watson

#### Complexity of Unordered CNF Games

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

TR18-038 | 21st February 2018
Nathanael Fijalkow, Guillaume Lagarde, Pierre Ohlmann

#### Tight Bounds using Hankel Matrix for Arithmetic Circuits with Unique Parse Trees

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 >>>

TR18-037 | 21st February 2018
Vijay Bhattiprolu, Mrinalkanti Ghosh, Venkatesan Guruswami, Euiwoong Lee, Madhur Tulsiani

#### Inapproximability of Matrix $p \rightarrow q$ Norms

We study the problem of computing the $p\rightarrow q$ norm of a matrix $A \in R^{m \times n}$, defined as $\|A\|_{p\rightarrow q} ~:=~ \max_{x \,\in\, R^n \setminus \{0\}} \frac{\|Ax\|_q}{\|x\|_p}$ This problem generalizes the spectral norm of a matrix ($p=q=2$) and the Grothendieck problem ($p=\infty$, $q=1$), and has been ... more >>>

TR18-036 | 21st February 2018
Michael Forbes, Sumanta Ghosh, Nitin Saxena

#### Towards blackbox identity testing of log-variate circuits

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 >>>

TR18-035 | 21st February 2018
Manindra Agrawal, Sumanta Ghosh, Nitin Saxena

#### Bootstrapping variables in algebraic circuits

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

TR18-034 | 15th February 2018
Young Kun Ko

#### On Symmetric Parallel Repetition : Towards Equivalence of MAX-CUT and UG

Unique Games Conjecture (UGC), proposed by [Khot02], lies in the center of many inapproximability results. At the heart of UGC lies approximability of MAX-CUT, which is a special instance of Unique Game.[KhotKMO04, MosselOO05] showed that assuming Unique Games Conjecture, it is NP-hard to distinguish between MAX-CUT instance that has a ... more >>>

TR18-033 | 16th February 2018
Benny Applebaum, Thomas Holenstein, Manoj Mishra, Ofer Shayevitz

#### The Communication Complexity of Private Simultaneous Messages, Revisited

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 >>>

TR18-032 | 14th February 2018
Gil Cohen, Bernhard Haeupler, Leonard Schulman

#### Explicit Binary Tree Codes with Polylogarithmic Size Alphabet

This paper makes progress on the problem of explicitly constructing a binary tree code with constant distance and constant alphabet size.

For every constant $\delta < 1$ we give an explicit binary tree code with distance $\delta$ and alphabet size $(\log{n})^{O(1)}$, where $n$ is the depth of the tree. This ... more >>>

TR18-031 | 15th February 2018
Iftach Haitner, Noam Mazor, Rotem Oshman, Omer Reingold, Amir Yehudayoff

#### On the Communication Complexity of Key-Agreement Protocols

Key-agreement protocols whose security is proven in the random oracle model are an important alternative to the more common public-key based key-agreement protocols. In the random oracle model, the parties and the eavesdropper have access to a shared random function (an "oracle"), but they are limited in the number of ... more >>>

TR18-030 | 9th February 2018
Shuichi Hirahara, Igor Carboni Oliveira, Rahul Santhanam

#### NP-hardness of Minimum Circuit Size Problem for OR-AND-MOD Circuits

The Minimum Circuit Size Problem (MCSP) asks for the size of the smallest boolean circuit that computes a given truth table. It is a prominent problem in NP that is believed to be hard, but for which no proof of NP-hardness has been found. A significant number of works have ... more >>>

TR18-029 | 9th February 2018
Neeraj Kayal, vineet nair, Chandan Saha

#### Average-case linear matrix factorization and reconstruction of low width Algebraic Branching Programs

Let us call a matrix $X$ as a linear matrix if its entries are affine forms, i.e. degree one polynomials. What is a minimal-sized representation of a given matrix $F$ as a product of linear matrices? Finding such a minimal representation is closely related to finding an optimal way to ... more >>>

TR18-028 | 7th February 2018
Xin Li

#### Pseudorandom Correlation Breakers, Independence Preserving Mergers and their Applications

The recent line of study on randomness extractors has been a great success, resulting in exciting new techniques, new connections, and breakthroughs to long standing open problems in the following five seemingly different topics: seeded non-malleable extractors, privacy amplification protocols with an active adversary, independent source extractors (and explicit Ramsey ... more >>>

TR18-027 | 8th February 2018
Jaroslaw Blasiok, Venkatesan Guruswami, Preetum Nakkiran, Atri Rudra, Madhu Sudan

#### General Strong Polarization

Ar\i kan's exciting discovery of polar codes has provided an altogether new way to efficiently achieve Shannon capacity. Given a (constant-sized) invertible matrix $M$, a family of polar codes can be associated with this matrix and its ability to approach capacity follows from the $\textit{polarization}$ of an associated $[0,1]$-bounded martingale, ... more >>>

TR18-026 | 7th February 2018
Lijie Chen

#### On The Hardness of Approximate and Exact (Bichromatic) Maximum Inner Product

Revisions: 1

In this paper we study the (Bichromatic) Maximum Inner Product Problem (Max-IP), in which we are given sets $A$ and $B$ of vectors, and the goal is to find $a \in A$ and $b \in B$ maximizing inner product $a \cdot b$. Max-IP is very basic and serves ... more >>>

TR18-025 | 1st February 2018
Olaf Beyersdorff, Judith Clymo

#### More on Size and Width in QBF Resolution

In their influential paper `Short proofs are narrow -- resolution made simple', Ben-Sasson and Wigderson introduced a crucial tool for proving lower bounds on the lengths of proofs in the resolution calculus. Over a decade later their technique for showing lower bounds on the size of proofs, by examining the ... more >>>

TR18-024 | 1st February 2018
Olaf Beyersdorff, Judith Clymo, Stefan Dantchev, Barnaby Martin

#### The Riis Complexity Gap for QBF Resolution

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 >>>

TR18-023 | 4th February 2018
Eran Iceland, Alex Samorodnitsky

#### On coset leader graphs of structured linear codes

Revisions: 1

We suggest a new approach to obtain bounds on locally correctable and some locally testable binary linear codes, by arguing that their coset leader graphs have high discrete Ricci curvature.

The bounds we obtain for locally correctable codes are worse than the best known bounds obtained using quantum information theory, ... more >>>

TR18-022 | 1st February 2018
Omer Reingold, Guy Rothblum, Ron Rothblum

#### Efficient Batch Verification for UP

Consider a setting in which a prover wants to convince a verifier of the correctness of k NP statements. For example, the prover wants to convince the verifier that k given integers N_1,...,N_k are all RSA moduli (i.e., products of equal length primes). Clearly this problem can be solved by ... more >>>

TR18-021 | 30th January 2018
Omri Ben-Eliezer, Eldar Fischer

#### Earthmover Resilience and Testing in Ordered Structures

One of the main challenges in property testing is to characterize those properties that are testable with a constant number of queries. For unordered structures such as graphs and hypergraphs this task has been mostly settled. However, for ordered structures such as strings, images, and ordered graphs, the characterization problem ... more >>>

TR18-020 | 30th January 2018
Meena Mahajan, Prajakta Nimbhorkar, Anuj Tawari

#### Computing the maximum using $(\min, +)$ formulas

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

TR18-019 | 28th January 2018
Zeyu Guo, Nitin Saxena, Amit Sinhababu

#### Algebraic dependencies and PSPACE algorithms in approximative complexity

Revisions: 1

Testing whether a set $\mathbf{f}$ of polynomials has an algebraic dependence is a basic problem with several applications. The polynomials are given as algebraic circuits. Algebraic independence testing question is wide open over finite fields (Dvir, Gabizon, Wigderson, FOCS'07). The best complexity known is NP$^{\#\rm P}$ (Mittmann, Saxena, Scheiblechner, Trans.AMS'14). ... more >>>

TR18-018 | 22nd January 2018

#### Polynomial-Time Random Oracles and Separating Complexity Classes

Bennett and Gill (1981) showed that P^A != NP^A != coNP^A for a random
oracle A, with probability 1. We investigate whether this result
extends to individual polynomial-time random oracles. We consider two
notions of random oracles: p-random oracles in the sense of
martingales and resource-bounded measure (Lutz, 1992; Ambos-Spies ... more >>>

TR18-017 | 26th January 2018
Venkatesan Guruswami, Nicolas Resch, Chaoping Xing

For a vector space $\mathbb{F}^n$ over a field $\mathbb{F}$, an $(\eta,\beta)$-dimension expander of degree $d$ is a collection of $d$ linear maps $\Gamma_j : \mathbb{F}^n \to \mathbb{F}^n$ such that for every subspace $U$ of $\mathbb{F}^n$ of dimension at most $\eta n$, the image of $U$ under all the maps, $\sum_{j=1}^d ... more >>> TR18-016 | 25th January 2018 Naomi Kirshner, Alex Samorodnitsky #### On$\ell_4$:$\ell_2$ratio of functions with restricted Fourier support Given a subset$A\subseteq \{0,1\}^n$, let$\mu(A)$be the maximal ratio between$\ell_4$and$\ell_2$norms of a function whose Fourier support is a subset of$A$. We make some simple observations about the connections between $\mu(A)$and the additive properties of$A$on one hand, and between$\mu(A)$and ... more >>> TR18-015 | 25th January 2018 Eshan Chattopadhyay, Pooya Hatami, Kaave Hosseini, Shachar Lovett #### Pseudorandom Generators from Polarizing Random Walks Comments: 1 We propose a new framework for constructing pseudorandom generators for$n$-variate Boolean functions. It is based on two new notions. First, we introduce fractional pseudorandom generators, which are pseudorandom distributions taking values in$[-1,1]^n$. Next, we use a fractional pseudorandom generator as steps of a random walk in$[-1,1]^n$that ... more >>> TR18-014 | 10th January 2018 Swagato Sanyal #### A Composition Theorem via Conflict Complexity Let$\R(\cdot)$stand for the bounded-error randomized query complexity. We show that for any relation$f \subseteq \{0,1\}^n \times \mathcal{S}$and partial Boolean function$g \subseteq \{0,1\}^n \times \{0,1\}$,$\R_{1/3}(f \circ g^n) = \Omega(\R_{4/9}(f) \cdot \sqrt{\R_{1/3}(g)})$. Independently of us, Gavinsky, Lee and Santha \cite{newcomp} proved this result. By an example ... more >>> TR18-013 | 18th January 2018 John Hitchcock, Adewale Sekoni #### Nondeterminisic Sublinear Time Has Measure 0 in P The measure hypothesis is a quantitative strengthening of the P$\neq$NP conjecture which asserts that NP is a nonnegligible subset of EXP. Cai, Sivakumar, and Strauss (1997) showed that the analogue of this hypothesis in P is false. In particular, they showed that NTIME[$n^{1/11}$] has measure 0 in P. ... more >>> TR18-012 | 20th January 2018 Valentine Kabanets, Zhenjian Lu #### Nisan-Wigderson Pseudorandom Generators for Circuits with Polynomial Threshold Gates We show how the classical Nisan-Wigderson (NW) generator [Nisan & Wigderson, 1994] yields a nontrivial pseudorandom generator (PRG) for circuits with sublinearly many polynomial threshold function (PTF) gates. For the special case of a single PTF of degree$d$on$n$inputs, our PRG for error$\epsilon$has the seed ... more >>> TR18-011 | 18th January 2018 John Hitchcock, Hadi Shafei #### Nonuniform Reductions and NP-Completeness Nonuniformity is a central concept in computational complexity with powerful connections to circuit complexity and randomness. Nonuniform reductions have been used to study the isomorphism conjecture for NP and completeness for larger complexity classes. We study the power of nonuniform reductions for NP-completeness, obtaining both separations and upper bounds for ... more >>> TR18-010 | 14th January 2018 Alexander A. Sherstov #### Algorithmic polynomials The approximate degree of a Boolean function$f(x_{1},x_{2},\ldots,x_{n})$is the minimum degree of a real polynomial that approximates$f$pointwise within$1/3$. Upper bounds on approximate degree have a variety of applications in learning theory, differential privacy, and algorithm design in general. Nearly all known upper bounds on approximate degree ... more >>> TR18-009 | 9th January 2018 Saikrishna Badrinarayanan, Yael Kalai, Dakshita Khurana, Amit Sahai, Daniel Wichs #### Non-Interactive Delegation for Low-Space Non-Deterministic Computation We construct a delegation scheme for verifying non-deterministic computations, with complexity proportional only to the non-deterministic space of the computation. Specifi cally, letting$n$denote the input length, we construct a delegation scheme for any language veri fiable in non-deterministic time and space$(T(n);S(n))$with communication complexity$poly(S(n))$, verifi er ... more >>> TR18-008 | 10th January 2018 Tom Gur, Igor Shinkar #### An Entropy Lower Bound for Non-Malleable Extractors A (k,\eps)-non-malleable extractor is a function nmExt : {0,1}^n x {0,1}^d -> {0,1} that takes two inputs, a weak source X~{0,1}^n of min-entropy k and an independent uniform seed s in {0,1}^d, and outputs a bit nmExt(X, s) that is \eps-close to uniform, even given the seed s and the ... more >>> TR18-007 | 9th January 2018 Lior Gishboliner, Asaf Shapira #### A Generalized Turan Problem and its Applications Our first theorem in this papers is a hierarchy theorem for the query complexity of testing graph properties with$1$-sided error; more precisely, we show that for every super-polynomial$f$, there is a graph property whose 1-sided-error query complexity is$f(\Theta(1/\varepsilon))$. No result of this type was previously known for ... more >>> TR18-006 | 10th January 2018 Subhash Khot, Dor Minzer, Muli Safra #### Pseudorandom Sets in Grassmann Graph have Near-Perfect Expansion Revisions: 1 We prove that pseudorandom sets in Grassmann graph have near-perfect expansion as hypothesized in [DKKMS-2]. This completes the proof of the$2$-to-$2$Games Conjecture (albeit with imperfect completeness) as proposed in [KMS, DKKMS-1], along with a contribution from [BKT]. The Grassmann graph$Gr_{global}$contains induced subgraphs$Gr_{local}$that are themselves ... more >>> TR18-005 | 9th January 2018 C. Seshadhri, Deeparnab Chakrabarty #### Adaptive Boolean Monotonicity Testing in Total Influence Time The problem of testing monotonicity of a Boolean function$f:\{0,1\}^n \to \{0,1\}$has received much attention recently. Denoting the proximity parameter by$\varepsilon$, the best tester is the non-adaptive$\widetilde{O}(\sqrt{n}/\varepsilon^2)$tester of Khot-Minzer-Safra (FOCS 2015). Let$I(f)$denote the total influence of$f$. We give an adaptive tester whose running ... more >>> TR18-004 | 3rd January 2018 Aayush Ojha, Raghunath Tewari #### Circuit Complexity of Bounded Planar Cutwidth Graph Matching Recently, perfect matching in bounded planar cutwidth bipartite graphs$BGGM$was shown to be in ACC$^0$by Hansen et al.. They also conjectured that the problem is in AC$^0$. In this paper, we disprove their conjecture by showing that the problem is not in AC$^0[p^{\alpha}]$for every prime$p$. ... more >>> TR18-003 | 2nd January 2018 Roei Tell #### Proving that prBPP=prP is as hard as "almost" proving that P \ne NP Revisions: 2 We show that any proof that$promise\textrm{-}\mathcal{BPP}=promise\textrm{-}\mathcal{P}$necessitates proving circuit lower bounds that almost yield that$\mathcal{P}\ne\mathcal{NP}$. More accurately, we show that if$promise\textrm{-}\mathcal{BPP}=promise\textrm{-}\mathcal{P}$, then for essentially any super-constant function$f(n)=\omega(1)$it holds that$NTIME[n^{f(n)}]\not\subseteq\mathcal{P}/\mathrm{poly}$. The conclusion of the foregoing conditional statement cannot be improved (to conclude that$\mathcal{NP}\not\subseteq\mathcal{P}/\mathrm{poly}$) without ... more >>> TR18-002 | 31st December 2017 Constantinos Daskalakis, Gautam Kamath, John Wright #### Which Distribution Distances are Sublinearly Testable? Given samples from an unknown distribution$p$and a description of a distribution$q$, are$p$and$q$close or far? This question of "identity testing" has received significant attention in the case of testing whether$p$and$q\$ are equal or far in total variation distance. However, in recent ... more >>>

TR18-001 | 2nd January 2018
Tim Roughgarden

#### Complexity Theory, Game Theory, and Economics

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

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

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