1,768 research outputs found
A Nearly Optimal Lower Bound on the Approximate Degree of AC
The approximate degree of a Boolean function is the least degree of a real polynomial that
approximates pointwise to error at most . We introduce a generic
method for increasing the approximate degree of a given function, while
preserving its computability by constant-depth circuits.
Specifically, we show how to transform any Boolean function with
approximate degree into a function on variables with approximate degree at least . In particular, if , then
is polynomially larger than . Moreover, if is computed by a
polynomial-size Boolean circuit of constant depth, then so is .
By recursively applying our transformation, for any constant we
exhibit an AC function of approximate degree . This
improves over the best previous lower bound of due to
Aaronson and Shi (J. ACM 2004), and nearly matches the trivial upper bound of
that holds for any function. Our lower bounds also apply to
(quasipolynomial-size) DNFs of polylogarithmic width.
We describe several applications of these results. We give:
* For any constant , an lower bound on the
quantum communication complexity of a function in AC.
* A Boolean function with approximate degree at least ,
where is the certificate complexity of . This separation is optimal
up to the term in the exponent.
* Improved secret sharing schemes with reconstruction procedures in AC.Comment: 40 pages, 1 figur
Imitation Games and Computation
TAn imitation game is a finite two person normal form game in which the two players have the same set of pure strategies and the goal of the second player is to choose the same pure strategy as the first player. Gale et al. (1950) gave a way of passing from a given two person game to a symmetric game whose symmetric Nash equilibria are in oneto-one correspondence with the Nash equilibria of the given game. We give a way of passing from a given symmetric two person game to an imitation game whose Nash equilibria are in one-to-one correspondence with the symmetric Nash equilibria of the given symmetric game. Lemke (1965) portrayed the Lemke-Howson algorithm as a special case of the Lemke paths algorithm. Using imitation games, we show how Lemke paths may be obtained by projecting Lemke-Howson paths.
High rate locally-correctable and locally-testable codes with sub-polynomial query complexity
In this work, we construct the first locally-correctable codes (LCCs), and
locally-testable codes (LTCs) with constant rate, constant relative distance,
and sub-polynomial query complexity. Specifically, we show that there exist
binary LCCs and LTCs with block length , constant rate (which can even be
taken arbitrarily close to 1), constant relative distance, and query complexity
. Previously such codes were known to exist
only with query complexity (for constant ), and
there were several, quite different, constructions known.
Our codes are based on a general distance-amplification method of Alon and
Luby~\cite{AL96_codes}. We show that this method interacts well with local
correctors and testers, and obtain our main results by applying it to suitably
constructed LCCs and LTCs in the non-standard regime of \emph{sub-constant
relative distance}.
Along the way, we also construct LCCs and LTCs over large alphabets, with the
same query complexity , which additionally have
the property of approaching the Singleton bound: they have almost the
best-possible relationship between their rate and distance. This has the
surprising consequence that asking for a large alphabet error-correcting code
to further be an LCC or LTC with query
complexity does not require any sacrifice in terms of rate and distance! Such a
result was previously not known for any query complexity.
Our results on LCCs also immediately give locally-decodable codes (LDCs) with
the same parameters
On the Limits of Depth Reduction at Depth 3 Over Small Finite Fields
Recently, Gupta et.al. [GKKS2013] proved that over Q any -variate
and -degree polynomial in VP can also be computed by a depth three
circuit of size . Over fixed-size
finite fields, Grigoriev and Karpinski proved that any
circuit that computes (or ) must be of size
[GK1998]. In this paper, we prove that over fixed-size finite fields, any
circuit for computing the iterated matrix multiplication
polynomial of generic matrices of size , must be of size
. The importance of this result is that over fixed-size
fields there is no depth reduction technique that can be used to compute all
the -variate and -degree polynomials in VP by depth 3 circuits of
size . The result [GK1998] can only rule out such a possibility
for depth 3 circuits of size .
We also give an example of an explicit polynomial () in
VNP (not known to be in VP), for which any circuit computing
it (over fixed-size fields) must be of size . The
polynomial we consider is constructed from the combinatorial design. An
interesting feature of this result is that we get the first examples of two
polynomials (one in VP and one in VNP) such that they have provably stronger
circuit size lower bounds than Permanent in a reasonably strong model of
computation.
Next, we prove that any depth 4
circuit computing
(over any field) must be of size . To the best of our knowledge, the polynomial is the
first example of an explicit polynomial in VNP such that it requires
size depth four circuits, but no known matching
upper bound
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