Achieving New Upper Bounds for the Hypergraph Duality Problem through Logic

The hypergraph duality problem DUAL is defined as follows: given two simple hypergraphs $\mathcal{G}$ and $\mathcal{H}$, decide whether $\mathcal{H}$ consists precisely of all minimal transversals of $\mathcal{G}$ (in which case we say that $\mathcal{G}$ is the dual of $\mathcal{H}$). This problem is equivalent to deciding whether two given non-redundant monotone DNFs are dual. It is known that non-DUAL, the complementary problem to DUAL, is in $\mathrm{GC}(\log^2 n,\mathrm{PTIME})$, where $\mathrm{GC}(f(n),\mathcal{C})$ denotes the complexity class of all problems that after a nondeterministic guess of $O(f(n))$ bits can be decided (checked) within complexity class $\mathcal{C}$. It was conjectured that non-DUAL is in $\mathrm{GC}(\log^2 n,\mathrm{LOGSPACE})$. In this paper we prove this conjecture and actually place the non-DUAL problem into the complexity class $\mathrm{GC}(\log^2 n,\mathrm{TC}^0)$ which is a subclass of $\mathrm{GC}(\log^2 n,\mathrm{LOGSPACE})$. We here refer to the logtime-uniform version of $\mathrm{TC}^0$, which corresponds to $\mathrm{FO(COUNT)}$, i.e., first order logic augmented by counting quantifiers. We achieve the latter bound in two steps. First, based on existing problem decomposition methods, we develop a new nondeterministic algorithm for non-DUAL that requires to guess $O(\log^2 n)$ bits. We then proceed by a logical analysis of this algorithm, allowing us to formulate its deterministic part in $\mathrm{FO(COUNT)}$. From this result, by the well known inclusion $\mathrm{TC}^0\subseteq\mathrm{LOGSPACE}$, it follows that DUAL belongs also to $\mathrm{DSPACE}[\log^2 n]$. Finally, by exploiting the principles on which the proposed nondeterministic algorithm is based, we devise a deterministic algorithm that, given two hypergraphs $\mathcal{G}$ and $\mathcal{H}$, computes in quadratic logspace a transversal of $\mathcal{G}$ missing in $\mathcal{H}$.Comment: Restructured the presentation in order to be the extended version of a paper that will shortly appear in SIAM Journal on Computin

Incremental complexity of a bi-objective hypergraph transversal problem

The hypergraph transversal problem has been intensively studied, from both a theoretical and a practical point of view. In particular , its incremental complexity is known to be quasi-polynomial in general and polynomial for bounded hypergraphs. Recent applications in computational biology however require to solve a generalization of this problem, that we call bi-objective transversal problem. The instance is in this case composed of a pair of hypergraphs (A, B), and the aim is to find minimal sets which hit all the hyperedges of A while intersecting a minimal set of hyperedges of B. In this paper, we formalize this problem, link it to a problem on monotone boolean $\land$ -- $\lor$ formulae of depth 3 and study its incremental complexity

On the Complexity of Axiom Pinpointing in Description Logics

We investigate the computational complexity of axiom pinpointing in Description Logics, which is the task of finding minimal subsets of a knowledge base that have a given consequence. We consider the problems of enumerating such subsets with and without order, and show hardness results that already hold for the propositional Horn fragment, or for the Description Logic EL. We show complexity results for several other related decision and enumeration problems for these fragments that extend to more expressive logics. In particular we show that hardness of these problems depends not only on expressivity of the fragment but also on the shape of the axioms used

On the complexity of enumerating pseudo-intents

AbstractWe investigate whether the pseudo-intents of a given formal context can efficiently be enumerated. We show that they cannot be enumerated in a specified lexicographic order with polynomial delay unless P=NP. Furthermore we show that if the restriction on the order of enumeration is removed, then the problem becomes at least as hard as enumerating minimal transversals of a given hypergraph. We introduce the notion of minimal pseudo-intents and show that recognizing minimal pseudo-intents is polynomial. Despite their less complicated nature, surprisingly it turns out that minimal pseudo-intents cannot be enumerated in output-polynomial time unless P=NP

Parallel Computation of the Minimal Elements of a Poset

Computing the minimal elements of a partially ordered finite set (poset) is a fundamental problem in combinatorics with numerous applications such as polynomial expression optimization, transversal hypergraph generation and redundant component removal, to name a few. We propose a divide-and-conquer algorithm which is not only cache-oblivious but also can be parallelized free of determinacy races. We have implemented it in Cilk++ targeting multicores. For our test problems of sufficiently large input size our code demonstrates a linear speedup on 32 cores.National Science Foundation (U.S.). (Grant number CNS-0615215)National Science Foundation (U.S.). (Grant number CCF- 0621511

Efficient enumeration of solutions produced by closure operations

In this paper we address the problem of generating all elements obtained by the saturation of an initial set by some operations. More precisely, we prove that we can generate the closure of a boolean relation (a set of boolean vectors) by polymorphisms with a polynomial delay. Therefore we can compute with polynomial delay the closure of a family of sets by any set of "set operations": union, intersection, symmetric difference, subsets, supersets $\dots$). To do so, we study the $Membership_{\mathcal{F}}$ problem: for a set of operations $\mathcal{F}$, decide whether an element belongs to the closure by $\mathcal{F}$ of a family of elements. In the boolean case, we prove that $Membership_{\mathcal{F}}$ is in P for any set of boolean operations $\mathcal{F}$. When the input vectors are over a domain larger than two elements, we prove that the generic enumeration method fails, since $Membership_{\mathcal{F}}$ is NP-hard for some $\mathcal{F}$. We also study the problem of generating minimal or maximal elements of closures and prove that some of them are related to well known enumeration problems such as the enumeration of the circuits of a matroid or the enumeration of maximal independent sets of a hypergraph. This article improves on previous works of the same authors.Comment: 30 pages, 1 figure. Long version of the article arXiv:1509.05623 of the same name which appeared in STACS 2016. Final version for DMTCS journa

Self-duality of bounded monotone boolean functions and related problems

AbstractIn this paper we examine the problem of determining the self-duality of a monotone boolean function in disjunctive normal form (DNF). We show that the self-duality of monotone boolean functions with n disjuncts such that each disjunct has at most k literals can be determined in O(2k2k2n) time. This implies an O(n2logn) algorithm for determining the self-duality of logn-DNF functions. We also consider the version where any two disjuncts have at most c literals in common. For this case we give an O(n4(c+1)) algorithm for determining self-duality

Partitioning qubits in hypergraph product codes to implement logical gates

The promise of high-rate low-density parity check (LDPC) codes to substantially reduce the overhead of fault-tolerant quantum computation depends on constructing efficient, fault-tolerant implementations of logical gates on such codes. Transversal gates are the simplest type of fault-tolerant gate, but the potential of transversal gates on LDPC codes has hitherto been largely neglected. We investigate the transversal gates that can be implemented in hypergraph product codes, a class of LDPC codes. Our analysis is aided by the construction of a symplectic canonical basis for the logical operators of hypergraph product codes, a result that may be of independent interest. We show that in these codes transversal gates can implement Hadamard (up to logical SWAP gates) and control-Z on all logical qubits. Moreover, we show that sequences of transversal operations, interleaved with error correction, allow implementation of entangling gates between arbitrary pairs of logical qubits in the same code block. We thereby demonstrate that transversal gates can be used as the basis for universal quantum computing on LDPC codes, when supplemented with state injection