6,527 research outputs found
Circuit Depth Relative to a Random Oracle
The study of separation of complexity classes with respect to random oracles was initiated by Bennett and Gill and continued by many other authors. Wilson defined relativized circuit depth and constructed various oracles A for which P^A ¬ NC^A NC^A_k ¬ NC^A_k+varepsilon, AC^A_k ¬ AC^A_k+varepsilon, AC^A_k ¬ subset= AC^A_k+1-varepsilon, and NC^A_k not subset= AC^A_ k-varepsilon,for all positive rational k and varepsilon, thus separating those classes for which no trivial argument shows inclusion. In this note we show that as a consequence of a single lemma, these separations (or improvements of them) hold with respect to a random oracle A
An average-case depth hierarchy theorem for Boolean circuits
We prove an average-case depth hierarchy theorem for Boolean circuits over
the standard basis of , , and gates.
Our hierarchy theorem says that for every , there is an explicit
-variable Boolean function , computed by a linear-size depth- formula,
which is such that any depth- circuit that agrees with on fraction of all inputs must have size This
answers an open question posed by H{\aa}stad in his Ph.D. thesis.
Our average-case depth hierarchy theorem implies that the polynomial
hierarchy is infinite relative to a random oracle with probability 1,
confirming a conjecture of H{\aa}stad, Cai, and Babai. We also use our result
to show that there is no "approximate converse" to the results of Linial,
Mansour, Nisan and Boppana on the total influence of small-depth circuits, thus
answering a question posed by O'Donnell, Kalai, and Hatami.
A key ingredient in our proof is a notion of \emph{random projections} which
generalize random restrictions
Pseudorandom generators and the BQP vs. PH problem
It is a longstanding open problem to devise an oracle relative to which BQP
does not lie in the Polynomial-Time Hierarchy (PH). We advance a natural
conjecture about the capacity of the Nisan-Wigderson pseudorandom generator
[NW94] to fool AC_0, with MAJORITY as its hard function. Our conjecture is
essentially that the loss due to the hybrid argument (which is a component of
the standard proof from [NW94]) can be avoided in this setting. This is a
question that has been asked previously in the pseudorandomness literature
[BSW03]. We then make three main contributions: (1) We show that our conjecture
implies the existence of an oracle relative to which BQP is not in the PH. This
entails giving an explicit construction of unitary matrices, realizable by
small quantum circuits, whose row-supports are "nearly-disjoint." (2) We give a
simple framework (generalizing the setting of Aaronson [A10]) in which any
efficiently quantumly computable unitary gives rise to a distribution that can
be distinguished from the uniform distribution by an efficient quantum
algorithm. When applied to the unitaries we construct, this framework yields a
problem that can be solved quantumly, and which forms the basis for the desired
oracle. (3) We prove that Aaronson's "GLN conjecture" [A10] implies our
conjecture; our conjecture is thus formally easier to prove. The GLN conjecture
was recently proved false for depth greater than 2 [A10a], but it remains open
for depth 2. If true, the depth-2 version of either conjecture would imply an
oracle relative to which BQP is not in AM, which is itself an outstanding open
problem. Taken together, our results have the following interesting
interpretation: they give an instantiation of the Nisan-Wigderson generator
that can be broken by quantum computers, but not by the relevant modes of
classical computation, if our conjecture is true.Comment: Updated in light of counterexample to the GLN conjectur
Immunity and Simplicity for Exact Counting and Other Counting Classes
Ko [RAIRO 24, 1990] and Bruschi [TCS 102, 1992] showed that in some
relativized world, PSPACE (in fact, ParityP) contains a set that is immune to
the polynomial hierarchy (PH). In this paper, we study and settle the question
of (relativized) separations with immunity for PH and the counting classes PP,
C_{=}P, and ParityP in all possible pairwise combinations. Our main result is
that there is an oracle A relative to which C_{=}P contains a set that is
immune to BPP^{ParityP}. In particular, this C_{=}P^A set is immune to PH^{A}
and ParityP^{A}. Strengthening results of Tor\'{a}n [J.ACM 38, 1991] and Green
[IPL 37, 1991], we also show that, in suitable relativizations, NP contains a
C_{=}P-immune set, and ParityP contains a PP^{PH}-immune set. This implies the
existence of a C_{=}P^{B}-simple set for some oracle B, which extends results
of Balc\'{a}zar et al. [SIAM J.Comp. 14, 1985; RAIRO 22, 1988] and provides the
first example of a simple set in a class not known to be contained in PH. Our
proof technique requires a circuit lower bound for ``exact counting'' that is
derived from Razborov's [Mat. Zametki 41, 1987] lower bound for majority.Comment: 20 page
On the Cryptographic Hardness of Local Search
We show new hardness results for the class of Polynomial Local Search problems (PLS):
- Hardness of PLS based on a falsifiable assumption on bilinear groups introduced by Kalai, Paneth, and Yang (STOC 2019), and the Exponential Time Hypothesis for randomized algorithms. Previous standard model constructions relied on non-falsifiable and non-standard assumptions.
- Hardness of PLS relative to random oracles. The construction is essentially different than previous constructions, and in particular is unconditionally secure. The construction also demonstrates the hardness of parallelizing local search.
The core observation behind the results is that the unique proofs property of incrementally-verifiable computations previously used to demonstrate hardness in PLS can be traded with a simple incremental completeness property
Quantum Simulation Logic, Oracles, and the Quantum Advantage
Query complexity is a common tool for comparing quantum and classical
computation, and it has produced many examples of how quantum algorithms differ
from classical ones. Here we investigate in detail the role that oracles play
for the advantage of quantum algorithms. We do so by using a simulation
framework, Quantum Simulation Logic (QSL), to construct oracles and algorithms
that solve some problems with the same success probability and number of
queries as the quantum algorithms. The framework can be simulated using only
classical resources at a constant overhead as compared to the quantum resources
used in quantum computation. Our results clarify the assumptions made and the
conditions needed when using quantum oracles. Using the same assumptions on
oracles within the simulation framework we show that for some specific
algorithms, like the Deutsch-Jozsa and Simon's algorithms, there simply is no
advantage in terms of query complexity. This does not detract from the fact
that quantum query complexity provides examples of how a quantum computer can
be expected to behave, which in turn has proved useful for finding new quantum
algorithms outside of the oracle paradigm, where the most prominent example is
Shor's algorithm for integer factorization.Comment: 48 pages, 46 figure
Static Data Structure Lower Bounds Imply Rigidity
We show that static data structure lower bounds in the group (linear) model
imply semi-explicit lower bounds on matrix rigidity. In particular, we prove
that an explicit lower bound of on the cell-probe
complexity of linear data structures in the group model, even against
arbitrarily small linear space , would already imply a
semi-explicit () construction of rigid matrices with
significantly better parameters than the current state of art (Alon, Panigrahy
and Yekhanin, 2009). Our results further assert that polynomial () data structure lower bounds against near-optimal space, would
imply super-linear circuit lower bounds for log-depth linear circuits (a
four-decade open question). In the succinct space regime , we show
that any improvement on current cell-probe lower bounds in the linear model
would also imply new rigidity bounds. Our results rely on a new connection
between the "inner" and "outer" dimensions of a matrix (Paturi and Pudlak,
2006), and on a new reduction from worst-case to average-case rigidity, which
is of independent interest
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