We consolidate two widely believed conjectures about tautologies---no optimal proof system exists, and most require superpolynomial size proofs in any system---into a $p$-isomorphism-invariant condition satisfied by all paddable $\textbf{coNP}$-complete languages or none. The condition is: for any Turing machine (TM) $M$ accepting the language, $\textbf{P}$-uniform input families requiring superpolynomial time ... more >>>

We study the following natural question on random sets of points in $\mathbb{F}_2^m$:

Given a random set of $k$ points $Z=\{z_1, z_2, \dots, z_k\} \subseteq \mathbb{F}_2^m$, what is the dimension of the space of degree at most $r$ multilinear polynomials that vanish on all points in $Z$?

We ... more >>>

We study the power of randomized polynomial-time non-adaptive reductions to the problem of approximating Kolmogorov complexity and its polynomial-time bounded variants.

As our first main result, we give a sharp dichotomy for randomized non-adaptive reducibility to approximating Kolmogorov complexity. We show that any computable language $L$ that has a randomized ... more >>>

In 2007 Guruswami, Umans and Vadhan gave an explicit construction of a lossless condenser based on Parvaresh-Vardy codes. This lossless condenser is a basic building block in many constructions, and, in particular, is behind the state of the art extractor constructions.

We give an alternative construction that is based on ... more >>>

Understanding the relationship between the worst-case and average-case complexities of $\mathrm{NP}$ and of other subclasses of $\mathrm{PH}$ is a long-standing problem in complexity theory. Over the last few years, much progress has been achieved in this front through the investigation of meta-complexity: the complexity of problems that refer to the ... more >>>

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

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

In a recent result of Bhargava, Saraf and Volkovich [FOCS’18; JACM’20], the first sparsity bound for constant individual degree polynomials was shown. In particular, it was shown that any factor of a polynomial with at most $s$ terms and individual degree bounded by $d$ can itself have at most $s^{O(d^2\log ... more >>>

In a breakthrough result, Ta-Shma described an explicit construction of an almost optimal binary code (STOC 2017). Ta-Shma's code has distance $\frac{1-\varepsilon}{2}$ and rate $\Omega\bigl(\varepsilon^{2+o(1)}\bigr)$ and thus it almost achieves the Gilbert-Varshamov bound, except for the $o(1)$ term in the exponent. The prior best list-decoding algorithm for (a variant of) ... more >>>

We analyze the sketching approximability of constraint satisfaction problems on Boolean domains, where the constraints are balanced linear threshold functions applied to literals. In particular, we explore the approximability of monarchy-like functions where the value of the function is determined by a weighted combination of the vote of the first ... more >>>

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

A Boolean maximum constraint satisfaction problem, Max-CSP\((f)\), is specified by a predicate \(f:\{-1,1\}^k\to\{0,1\}\). An \(n\)-variable instance of Max-CSP\((f)\) consists of a list of constraints, each of which applies \(f\) to \(k\) distinct literals drawn from the \(n\) variables. For \(k=2\), Chou, Golovnev, and Velusamy [CGV20, FOCS 2020] obtained explicit ratios ... more >>>

In this survey we describe progress over the last decade or so in understanding the complexity of solving constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs) approximately in the streaming and sketching models of computation. After surveying some of the results we give some sketches of the proofs and in particular try to explain ... more >>>

In this paper, we prove strengthened lower bounds for constant-depth set-multilinear formulas. More precisely, we show that over any field, there is an explicit polynomial $f$ in VNP defined over $n^2$ variables, and of degree $n$, such that any product-depth $\Delta$ set-multilinear formula computing $f$ has size at least $n^{\Omega ... more >>>

Multivariate multipoint evaluation is the problem of evaluating a multivariate polynomial, given as a coefficient vector, simultaneously at multiple evaluation points. In this work, we show that there exists a deterministic algorithm for multivariate multipoint evaluation over any finite field $\mathbb{F}$ that outputs the evaluations of an $m$-variate polynomial of ... more >>>

A superredundant clause is a clause that is redundant in the resolution closure of a formula. The converse concept of superirredundancy ensures membership of the clause in all minimal CNF formulae that are equivalent to the given one. This allows for building formulae where some clauses are fixed when minimizing ... more >>>

We consider the $P$-CSP problem for $3$-ary predicates $P$ on satisfiable instances. We show that under certain conditions on $P$ and a $(1,s)$ integrality gap instance of the $P$-CSP problem, it can be translated into a dictatorship vs. quasirandomness test with perfect completeness and soundness $s+\varepsilon$, for every constant $\varepsilon>0$. ... more >>>

The Merlin-Arthur class of languages MA is included into Arthur-Merlin class AM, and into PP. For a standard transformation of a given MA protocol with Arthur's message (= random string) of length $a$ and Merlin's message of length $m$ to a PP machine, the latter needs $O(ma)$ random bits. The ... more >>>

In this paper, we introduce a measure of Boolean functions we call diameter, that captures the relationship between certificate complexity and several other measures of Boolean functions. Our measure can be viewed as a variation on alternating number, but while alternating number can be exponentially larger than certificate complexity, we ... more >>>

It is well-known that Resolution proofs can be efficiently simulated by Sherali-Adams (SA) proofs. We show, however, that any such simulation needs to exploit huge coefficients: Resolution cannot be efficiently simulated by SA when the coefficients are written in unary. We also show that Reversible Resolution (a variant of MaxSAT ... more >>>

What is the actual cost of derandomization? And can we get it for free? These questions were recently raised by Doron et. al (FOCS 2020) and have been attracting considerable interest. In this work we extend the study of these questions to the setting of *derandomizing interactive proofs systems*.

The classical coding theorem in Kolmogorov complexity states that if an $n$-bit string $x$ is sampled with probability $\delta$ by an algorithm with prefix-free domain then K$(x) \leq \log(1/\delta) + O(1)$. In a recent work, Lu and Oliveira [LO21] established an unconditional time-bounded version of this result, by showing that ... more >>>

We prove super-polynomial lower bounds on the size of propositional proof systems operating with constant-depth algebraic circuits over fields of zero characteristic. Specifically, we show that the subset-sum variant $\sum_{i,j,k,l\in[n]} z_{ijkl}x_ix_jx_kx_l-\beta = 0$, for Boolean variables, does not have polynomial-size IPS refutations where the refutations are multilinear and written as ... more >>>

Random $\Delta$-CNF formulas are one of the few candidates that are expected to be hard to refute in any proof system. One of the frontiers in the direction of proving lower bounds on these formulas is the $k$-DNF Resolution proof system (aka $\mathrm{Res}(k)$). Assume we sample $m$ clauses over $n$ ... more >>>

We investigate the complexity of languages that correspond to algebraic real numbers, and we present improved upper bounds on the complexity of these languages. Our key technical contribution is the presentation of improved uniform TC^0 circuits
for division, matrix powering, and related problems, where the improvement is in terms of ... more >>>

Given i.i.d. samples from an unknown distribution over a large domain $[N]$, approximating several basic quantities, including the distribution's support size, its entropy, and its distance from the uniform distribution, requires $\Theta(N / \log N)$ samples [Valiant and Valiant, STOC 2011].

Suppose, however, that we can interact with a powerful ... more >>>

We study the problem of testing whether a function $f: \mathbb{R}^n \to \mathbb{R}$ is a polynomial of degree at most $d$ in the distribution-free testing model. Here, the distance between functions is measured with respect to an unknown distribution $\mathcal{D}$ over $\mathbb{R}^n$ from which we can draw samples. In contrast ... more >>>

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

Two of the most useful cryptographic primitives that can be constructed from one-way functions are pseudorandom generators (PRGs) and universal one-way hash functions (UOWHFs). The three major efficiency measures of these primitives are: seed length, number of calls to the one-way function, and adaptivity of these calls. Although a long ... more >>>

We consider the range avoidance problem (called Avoid): given the description of a circuit $C:\{0, 1\}^n \to \{0, 1\}^\ell$ (where $\ell > n$), find a string $y\in\{0, 1\}^\ell$ that is not in the range of $C$. This problem is complete for the class APEPP that corresponds to explicit constructions of ... more >>>

We show that a randomly chosen linear map over a finite field gives a good hash function in the $\ell_\infty$ sense. More concretely, consider a set $S \subset \mathbb{F}_q^n$ and a randomly chosen linear map $L : \mathbb{F}_q^n \to \mathbb{F}_q^t$ with $q^t$ taken to be sufficiently smaller than $|S|$. Let ... more >>>

We prove that the proof system OBDD(and, weakening) is not automatable unless P = NP. The proof is based upon the celebrated result of Atserias and Muller [FOCS 2019] about the hardness of automatability for resolution. The heart of the proof is lifting with a multi-output indexing gadget from resolution ... more >>>

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

Given query access to a monotone function $f\colon\{0,1\}^n\to\{0,1\}$ with certificate complexity $C(f)$ and an input $x^{\star}$, we design an algorithm that outputs a size-$C(f)$ subset of $x^{\star}$ certifying the value of $f(x^{\star})$. Our algorithm makes $O(C(f) \cdot \log n)$ queries to $f$, which matches the information-theoretic lower bound for this ... more >>>

We prove that for every 3-player (3-prover) game $\mathcal G$ with value less than one, whose query distribution has the support $\mathcal S = \{(1,0,0), (0,1,0), (0,0,1)\}$ of hamming weight one vectors, the value of the $n$-fold parallel repetition $\mathcal G^{\otimes n}$ decays polynomially fast to zero; that is, there ... more >>>

In continuation to our recent work on noncommutative
polynomial factorization, we consider the factorization problem for
matrices of polynomials and show the following results.
\begin{itemize}
\item Given as input a full rank $d\times d$ matrix $M$ whose entries
$M_{ij}$ are polynomials in the free noncommutative ring
more >>>

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

Quantified conflict-driven clause learning (QCDCL) is one of the main solving approaches for quantified Boolean formulas (QBF). One of the differences between QCDCL and propositional CDCL is that QCDCL typically follows the prefix order of the QBF for making decisions.
We investigate an alternative model for QCDCL solving where decisions ... more >>>

We prove that for every 3-player (3-prover) game, with binary questions and answers and value less than $1$, the value of the $n$-fold parallel repetition of the game decays polynomially fast to $0$. That is, for every such game, there exists a constant $c>0$, such that the value of the ... more >>>

For every prime p > 0, every n > 0 and ? = O(logn), we show the existence
of an unsatisfiable system of polynomial equations over O(n log n) variables of degree O(log n) such that any Polynomial Calculus refutation over F_p with M extension variables, each depending on at ... more >>>

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

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

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

A seminal result in learning theory characterizes the PAC learnability of binary classes through the Vapnik-Chervonenkis dimension. Extending this characterization to the general multiclass setting has been open since the pioneering works on multiclass PAC learning in the late 1980s. This work resolves this problem: we characterize multiclass PAC learnability ... more >>>

We analyze the Fourier growth, i.e. the $L_1$ Fourier weight at level $k$ (denoted $L_{1,k}$), of read-once regular branching programs.
We prove that every read-once regular branching program $B$ of width $w \in [1,\infty]$ with $s$ accepting states on $n$-bit inputs must have its $L_{1,k}$ bounded by
$$
\min\left\{ ... more >>>

We prove that a modification of Andreev's function is not computable by $(3 + \alpha - \varepsilon) \log{n}$ depth De Morgan formula with $(2\alpha - \varepsilon)\log{n}$ layers of AND gates at the top for any $1/5 > \alpha > 0$ and any constant $\varepsilon > 0$. In order to do ... more >>>

A distribution is k-incompressible, Yao [FOCS ’82], if no efficient compression scheme compresses it to less than k bits. While being a natural measure, its relation to other computational analogs of entropy such as pseudoentropy, Hastad, Impagliazzo, Levin, and Luby [SICOMP 99], and to other cryptographic hardness assumptions, was unclear.

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 that the ''majority is least stable'' conjecture is true for $n=1$ and $3$ and false for all odd $n\geq 5$.

Tanner codes are long error correcting codes obtained from short codes and a graph, with bits on the edges and parity-check constraints from the short codes enforced at the vertices of the graph. Combining good short codes together with a spectral expander graph yields the celebrated expander codes of Sipser ... more >>>

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 >>>

We construct a family of binary codes of relative distance $\frac{1}{2}-\varepsilon$ and rate $\varepsilon^{2} \cdot 2^{-\log^{\alpha}(1/\varepsilon)}$ for $\alpha \approx \frac{1}{2}$ that are decodable, probabilistically, in near linear time. This improves upon the rate of the state-of-the-art near-linear time decoding near the GV bound due to Jeronimo, Srivastava, and Tulsiani, who ... 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 >>>

A recurring challenge in the theory of pseudorandomness and circuit complexity is the explicit construction of ``incompressible strings,'' i.e. finite objects which lack a specific type of structure or simplicity. In most cases, there is an associated NP search problem which we call the ``compression problem,'' where we are given ... more >>>

We study the pseudorandomness of random walks on expander graphs against tests computed by symmetric functions and permutation branching programs. These questions are motivated by applications of expander walks in the coding theory and derandomization literatures. We show that expander walks fool symmetric functions up to a $O(\lambda)$ error in ... more >>>

A map $g:\{0,1\}^n\to\{0,1\}^m$ ($m>n$) is a hard proof complexity generator for a proof system $P$ iff for every string $b\in\{0,1\}^m\setminus Rng(g)$, formula $\tau_b(g)$ naturally expressing $b\not\in Rng(g)$ requires superpolynomial size $P$-proofs. One of the well-studied maps in the theory of proof complexity generators is Nisan--Wigderson generator. Razborov (Annals of Mathematics ... more >>>

In this paper we study the problem of efficiently factorizing polynomials in the free noncommutative ring F of polynomials in noncommuting variables x_1,x_2,…,x_n over the field F. We obtain the following result:

Given a noncommutative arithmetic formula of size s computing a noncommutative polynomial f in F as input, where ... more >>>

We give PRG for depth-$d$, size-$m$ $\mathrm{AC}^0$ circuits with seed length $O(\log^{d-1}(m)\log(m/\varepsilon)\log\log(m))$. Our PRG improves on previous work [TX13, ST19, Kel21] from various aspects. It has optimal dependence on $\frac{1}{\varepsilon}$ and is only one “$\log\log(m)$” away from the lower bound barrier. For the case of $d=2$, the seed length tightly ... more >>>

We present a new framework for designing worst-case to average-case reductions. For a large class of problems, it provides an explicit transformation of algorithms running in time $T$ that are only correct on a small (subconstant) fraction of their inputs into algorithms running in time $\widetilde{O}(T)$ that are correct on ... more >>>

The notion of lifting theorems is a generic method to lift hardness of one-party functions to two-party lower bounds in communication model. It has many applications in different areas such as proof complexity, game theory, combinatorial optimization. Among many lifting results, a central idea is called Raz-McKenize simulation (FOCS 1997). ... more >>>

We show $\text{EOPL}=\text{PLS}\cap\text{PPAD}$. Here the class $\text{EOPL}$ consists of all total search problems that reduce to the End-of-Potential-Line problem, which was introduced in the works by Hubacek and Yogev (SICOMP 2020) and Fearnley et al. (JCSS 2020). In particular, our result yields a new simpler proof of the breakthrough collapse ... more >>>

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

In this paper, we prove a super-cubic lower bound on the size of a communication protocol for generalized Karchmer-Wigderson game for some explicit function $f: \{0,1\}^n\to \{0,1\}^{\log n}$. Lower bounds for original Karchmer-Wigderson games correspond to De Morgan formula lower bounds, thus the best known size lower bound is cubic. ... more >>>

We use results from communication complexity, both new and old ones, to prove lower bounds for unambiguous finite automata (UFAs). We show three results.

$\textbf{Complement:}$ There is a language $L$ recognised by an $n$-state UFA such that the complement language $\overline{L}$ requires NFAs with $n^{\tilde{\Omega}(\log n)}$ states. This improves on ... 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 >>>

In this note we show that all sets that are neither finite nor too dense are non-trivial to test in the sense that, for every $\epsilon>0$, distinguishing between strings in the set and strings that are $\epsilon$-far from the set requires $\Omega(1/\epsilon)$ queries.
Specifically, we show that if, for ... more >>>

We study the error resilience of transitive linear codes over $F_2$. We give tight bounds on the weight distribution of every such code $C$, and we show how these bounds can be used to infer bounds on the error rates that $C$ can tolerate on the binary symmetric channel. Using ... more >>>

The continuous learning with errors (CLWE) problem was recently introduced by Bruna
et al. (STOC 2021). They showed that its hardness implies infeasibility of learning Gaussian
mixture models, while its tractability implies efficient Discrete Gaussian Sampling and thus
asymptotic improvements in worst-case lattice algorithms. No reduction between CLWE and
LWE ... more >>>

We present the first truly explicit constructions of \emph{non-malleable codes} against tampering by bounded polynomial size circuits. These objects imply unproven circuit lower bounds and our construction is secure provided E requires exponential size nondeterministic circuits, an assumption from the derandomization literature.

Prior works on NMC ... more >>>

Read-once Oblivious Algebraic Branching Programs (ROABPs) compute polynomials as products of univariate polynomials that have matrices as coefficients. In an attempt to understand the landscape of algebraic complexity classes surrounding ROABPs, we study classes of ROABPs based on the algebraic structure of these coefficient matrices. We study connections between polynomials ... more >>>

We give a deterministic space-efficient algorithm for approximating powers of stochastic matrices. On input a $w \times w$ stochastic matrix $A$, our algorithm approximates $A^{n}$ in space $\widetilde{O}(\log n + \sqrt{\log n}\cdot \log w)$ to within high accuracy. This improves upon the seminal work by Saks and Zhou (FOCS'95), that ... more >>>

We give a simplified proof of Hirahara's STOC'21 result showing that $DistPH \subseteq AvgP$ would imply $PH \subseteq DTIME[2^{O(n/\log n)}]$. The argument relies on a proof of the new result: Symmetry of Information for time-bounded Kolmogorov complexity under the assumption that $NP$ is easy on average, which is interesting in ... more >>>

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

A \emph{sunflower} is a collection of sets whose pairwise intersections are identical. In this article, we shall go sunflower-picking. We find sunflowers in several seemingly unrelated fields, before turning to discuss recent progress on the famous sunflower conjecture of Erd\H{o}s and Rado, made by Alweiss, Lovett, Wu and Zhang.

Random walks in expander graphs and their various derandomizations (e.g., replacement/zigzag product) are invaluable tools from pseudorandomness. Recently, Ta-Shma used s-wide replacement walks in his breakthrough construction of a binary linear code almost matching the Gilbert-Varshamov bound (STOC 2017). Ta-Shma’s original analysis was entirely linear algebraic, and subsequent developments have ... more >>>

We give a new characterization of the Sherali-Adams proof system, showing that there is a degree-$d$ Sherali-Adams refutation of an unsatisfiable CNF formula $C$ if and only if there is an $\varepsilon > 0$ and a degree-$d$ conical junta $J$ such that $viol_C(x) - \varepsilon = J$, where $viol_C(x)$ counts ... more >>>

Merge Resolution (MRes [Beyersdorff et al. J. Autom. Reason.'2021]) is a recently introduced proof system for false QBFs. Unlike other known QBF proof systems, it builds winning strategies for the universal player within the proofs. Every line of this proof system consists of existential clauses along with countermodels. MRes stores ... more >>>

In the decision tree computation model for Boolean functions, the depth corresponds to query complexity, and size corresponds to storage space. The depth measure is the most well-studied one, and is known to be polynomially related to several non-computational complexity measures of functions such as certificate complexity. The size measure ... more >>>