24 research outputs found
Algebraic Hardness Versus Randomness in Low Characteristic
We show that lower bounds for explicit constant-variate polynomials over fields of characteristic p > 0 are sufficient to derandomize polynomial identity testing over fields of characteristic p. In this setting, existing work on hardness-randomness tradeoffs for polynomial identity testing requires either the characteristic to be sufficiently large or the notion of hardness to be stronger than the standard syntactic notion of hardness used in algebraic complexity. Our results make no restriction on the characteristic of the field and use standard notions of hardness.
We do this by combining the Kabanets-Impagliazzo generator with a white-box procedure to take p-th roots of circuits computing a p-th power over fields of characteristic p. When the number of variables appearing in the circuit is bounded by some constant, this procedure turns out to be efficient, which allows us to bypass difficulties related to factoring circuits in characteristic p.
We also combine the Kabanets-Impagliazzo generator with recent "bootstrapping" results in polynomial identity testing to show that a sufficiently-hard family of explicit constant-variate polynomials yields a near-complete derandomization of polynomial identity testing. This result holds over fields of both zero and positive characteristic and complements a recent work of Guo, Kumar, Saptharishi, and Solomon, who obtained a slightly stronger statement over fields of characteristic zero
Subexponential Size Hitting Sets for Bounded Depth Multilinear Formulas
In this paper we give subexponential size hitting sets for bounded depth multilinear arithmetic formulas. Using the known relation
between black-box PIT and lower bounds we obtain lower bounds for these models.
For depth-3 multilinear formulas, of size exp(n^delta), we give a hitting set of size exp(~O(n^(2/3 + 2*delta/3))). This implies a lower bound of exp(~Omega(n^(1/2))) for depth-3 multilinear formulas, for some explicit polynomial.
For depth-4 multilinear formulas, of size exp(n^delta), we give a hitting set of size exp(~O(n^(2/3 + 4*delta/3)). This implies a lower bound of exp(~Omega(n^(1/4))) for depth-4 multilinear formulas, for some explicit polynomial.
A regular formula consists of alternating layers of +,* gates, where all gates at layer i have the same fan-in. We give a
hitting set of size (roughly) exp(n^(1-delta)), for regular depth-d multilinear formulas of size exp(n^delta), where delta = O(1/sqrt(5)^d)). This result implies a lower bound of roughly exp(~Omega(n^(1/sqrt(5)^d))) for such formulas.
We note that better lower bounds are known for these models, but also that none of these bounds was achieved via construction of
a hitting set. Moreover, no lower bound that implies such PIT results, even in the white-box model, is currently known.
Our results are combinatorial in nature and rely on reducing the underlying formula, first to a depth-4 formula, and then to a
read-once algebraic branching program (from depth-3 formulas we go straight to read-once algebraic branching programs)
Polynomial Identity Testing via Evaluation of Rational Functions
We introduce a hitting set generator for Polynomial Identity Testing based on
evaluations of low-degree univariate rational functions at abscissas associated
with the variables. Despite the univariate nature, we establish an equivalence
up to rescaling with a generator introduced by Shpilka and Volkovich, which has
a similar structure but uses multivariate polynomials in the abscissas.
We study the power of the generator by characterizing its vanishing ideal,
i.e., the set of polynomials that it fails to hit. Capitalizing on the
univariate nature, we develop a small collection of polynomials that jointly
produce the vanishing ideal. As corollaries, we obtain tight bounds on the
minimum degree, sparseness, and partition class size of set-multilinearity in
the vanishing ideal. Inspired by an alternating algebra representation, we
develop a structured deterministic membership test for the vanishing ideal. As
a proof of concept, we rederive known derandomization results based on the
generator by Shpilka and Volkovich and present a new application for read-once
oblivious algebraic branching programs.Comment: Appeared at ITCS 202
Algebraic Independence and Blackbox Identity Testing
Algebraic independence is an advanced notion in commutative algebra that
generalizes independence of linear polynomials to higher degree. Polynomials
{f_1, ..., f_m} \subset \F[x_1, ..., x_n] are called algebraically independent
if there is no non-zero polynomial F such that F(f_1, ..., f_m) = 0. The
transcendence degree, trdeg{f_1, ..., f_m}, is the maximal number r of
algebraically independent polynomials in the set. In this paper we design
blackbox and efficient linear maps \phi that reduce the number of variables
from n to r but maintain trdeg{\phi(f_i)}_i = r, assuming f_i's sparse and
small r. We apply these fundamental maps to solve several cases of blackbox
identity testing:
(1) Given a polynomial-degree circuit C and sparse polynomials f_1, ..., f_m
with trdeg r, we can test blackbox D := C(f_1, ..., f_m) for zeroness in
poly(size(D))^r time.
(2) Define a spsp_\delta(k,s,n) circuit C to be of the form \sum_{i=1}^k
\prod_{j=1}^s f_{i,j}, where f_{i,j} are sparse n-variate polynomials of degree
at most \delta. For k = 2 we give a poly(sn\delta)^{\delta^2} time blackbox
identity test.
(3) For a general depth-4 circuit we define a notion of rank. Assuming there
is a rank bound R for minimal simple spsp_\delta(k,s,n) identities, we give a
poly(snR\delta)^{Rk\delta^2} time blackbox identity test for spsp_\delta(k,s,n)
circuits. This partially generalizes the state of the art of depth-3 to depth-4
circuits.
The notion of trdeg works best with large or zero characteristic, but we also
give versions of our results for arbitrary fields.Comment: 32 pages, preliminary versio
Quasi-polynomial Hitting-set for Set-depth-Delta Formulas
We call a depth-4 formula C set-depth-4 if there exists a (unknown) partition
(X_1,...,X_d) of the variable indices [n] that the top product layer respects,
i.e. C(x) = \sum_{i=1}^k \prod_{j=1}^{d} f_{i,j}(x_{X_j}), where f_{i,j} is a
sparse polynomial in F[x_{X_j}]. Extending this definition to any depth - we
call a depth-Delta formula C (consisting of alternating layers of Sigma and Pi
gates, with a Sigma-gate on top) a set-depth-Delta formula if every Pi-layer in
C respects a (unknown) partition on the variables; if Delta is even then the
product gates of the bottom-most Pi-layer are allowed to compute arbitrary
monomials.
In this work, we give a hitting-set generator for set-depth-Delta formulas
(over any field) with running time polynomial in exp(({Delta}^2 log s)^{Delta -
1}), where s is the size bound on the input set-depth-Delta formula. In other
words, we give a quasi-polynomial time blackbox polynomial identity test for
such constant-depth formulas. Previously, the very special case of Delta=3
(also known as set-multilinear depth-3 circuits) had no known sub-exponential
time hitting-set generator. This was declared as an open problem by Shpilka &
Yehudayoff (FnT-TCS 2010); the model being first studied by Nisan & Wigderson
(FOCS 1995). Our work settles this question, not only for depth-3 but, up to
depth epsilon.log s / loglog s, for a fixed constant epsilon < 1.
The technique is to investigate depth-Delta formulas via depth-(Delta-1)
formulas over a Hadamard algebra, after applying a `shift' on the variables. We
propose a new algebraic conjecture about the low-support rank-concentration in
the latter formulas, and manage to prove it in the case of set-depth-Delta
formulas.Comment: 22 page