68 research outputs found
Exact Algorithms for 0-1 Integer Programs with Linear Equality Constraints
In this paper, we show -time and -space exact
algorithms for 0-1 integer programs where constraints are linear equalities and
coefficients are arbitrary real numbers. Our algorithms are quadratically
faster than exhaustive search and almost quadratically faster than an algorithm
for an inequality version of the problem by Impagliazzo, Lovett, Paturi and
Schneider (arXiv:1401.5512), which motivated our work. Rather than improving
the time and space complexity, we advance to a simple direction as inclusion of
many NP-hard problems in terms of exact exponential algorithms. Specifically,
we extend our algorithms to linear optimization problems
New Lower Bounds and Derandomization for ACC, and a Derandomization-Centric View on the Algorithmic Method
In this paper, we obtain several new results on lower bounds and derandomization for ACC? circuits (constant-depth circuits consisting of AND/OR/MOD_m gates for a fixed constant m, a frontier class in circuit complexity):
1) We prove that any polynomial-time Merlin-Arthur proof system with an ACC? verifier (denoted by MA_{ACC?}) can be simulated by a nondeterministic proof system with quasi-polynomial running time and polynomial proof length, on infinitely many input lengths. This improves the previous simulation by [Chen, Lyu, and Williams, FOCS 2020], which requires both quasi-polynomial running time and proof length.
2) We show that MA_{ACC?} cannot be computed by fixed-polynomial-size ACC? circuits, and our hard languages are hard on a sufficiently dense set of input lengths.
3) We show that NEXP (nondeterministic exponential-time) does not have ACC? circuits of sub-half-exponential size, improving the previous sub-third-exponential size lower bound for NEXP against ACC? by [Williams, J. ACM 2014].
Combining our first and second results gives a conceptually simpler and derandomization-centric proof of the recent breakthrough result NQP := NTIME[2^polylog(n)] ? ? ACC? by [Murray and Williams, SICOMP 2020]: Instead of going through an easy witness lemma as they did, we first prove an ACC? lower bound for a subclass of MA, and then derandomize that subclass into NQP, while retaining its hardness against ACC?.
Moreover, since our derandomization of MA_{ACC?} achieves a polynomial proof length, we indeed prove that nondeterministic quasi-polynomial-time with n^?(1) nondeterminism bits (denoted as NTIMEGUESS[2^polylog(n), n^?(1)]) has no poly(n)-size ACC? circuits, giving a new proof of a result by Vyas. Combining with a win-win argument based on randomized encodings from [Chen and Ren, STOC 2020], we also prove that NTIMEGUESS[2^polylog(n), n^?(1)] cannot be 1/2+1/poly(n)-approximated by poly(n)-size ACC? circuits, improving the recent strongly average-case lower bounds for NQP against ACC? by [Chen and Ren, STOC 2020].
One interesting technical ingredient behind our second result is the construction of a PSPACE-complete language that is paddable, downward self-reducible, same-length checkable, and weakly error correctable. Moreover, all its reducibility properties have corresponding AC?[2] non-adaptive oracle circuits. Our construction builds and improves upon similar constructions from [Trevisan and Vadhan, Complexity 2007] and [Chen, FOCS 2019], which all require at least TC? oracle circuits for implementing these properties
Short PCPs with projection queries
We construct a PCP for NTIME(2 n) with constant soundness, 2 n poly(n) proof length, and poly(n) queries where the verifier’s computation is simple: the queries are a projection of the input randomness, and the computation on the prover’s answers is a 3CNF. The previous upper bound for these two computations was polynomial-size circuits. Composing this verifier with a proof oracle increases the circuit-depth of the latter by 2. Our PCP is a simple variant of the PCP by Ben-Sasson, Goldreich, Harsha, Sudan, and Vadhan (CCC 2005). We also give a more modular exposition of the latter, separating the combinatorial from the algebraic arguments. If our PCP is taken as a black box, we obtain a more direct proof of the result by Williams, later with Santhanam (CCC 2013) that derandomizing circuits on n bits from a class C in time 2 n /n ω(1) yields that NEXP is not in a related circuit class C ′. Our proof yields a tighter connection: C is an And-Or of circuits from C ′. Along the way we show that the same lower bound follows if the satisfiability of the And of any 3 circuits from C ′ can be solved in time 2 n /n ω(1). ∗The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Community’
A Satisfiability Algorithm for Sparse Depth Two Threshold Circuits
We give a nontrivial algorithm for the satisfiability problem for cn-wire
threshold circuits of depth two which is better than exhaustive search by a
factor 2^{sn} where s= 1/c^{O(c^2)}. We believe that this is the first
nontrivial satisfiability algorithm for cn-wire threshold circuits of depth
two. The independently interesting problem of the feasibility of sparse 0-1
integer linear programs is a special case. To our knowledge, our algorithm is
the first to achieve constant savings even for the special case of Integer
Linear Programming. The key idea is to reduce the satisfiability problem to the
Vector Domination Problem, the problem of checking whether there are two
vectors in a given collection of vectors such that one dominates the other
component-wise.
We also provide a satisfiability algorithm with constant savings for depth
two circuits with symmetric gates where the total weighted fan-in is at most
cn.
One of our motivations is proving strong lower bounds for TC^0 circuits,
exploiting the connection (established by Williams) between satisfiability
algorithms and lower bounds. Our second motivation is to explore the connection
between the expressive power of the circuits and the complexity of the
corresponding circuit satisfiability problem
Satisfiability Algorithm for Syntactic Read--times Branching Programs
The satisfiability of a given branching program is to determine whether there exists a consistent path from the root to 1-sink.
In a syntactic read-k-times branching program, each variable appears at most k times in any path from the root to a sink.
We provide a satisfiability algorithm for syntactic read-k-times branching programs with n variables and m edges that runs in time Oleft(poly(n, m^{k^2})cdot 2^{(1-mu(k))n}right), where mu(k) = frac{1}{4^{k+1}}. Our algorithm is based on the decomposition technique shown by Borodin, Razborov and Smolensky [Computational Complexity, 1993]
Strong ETH Breaks With Merlin and Arthur: Short Non-Interactive Proofs of Batch Evaluation
We present an efficient proof system for Multipoint Arithmetic Circuit
Evaluation: for every arithmetic circuit of size and
degree over a field , and any inputs ,
the Prover sends the Verifier the values and a proof of length, and
the Verifier tosses coins and can check the proof in about time, with probability of error less than .
For small degree , this "Merlin-Arthur" proof system (a.k.a. MA-proof
system) runs in nearly-linear time, and has many applications. For example, we
obtain MA-proof systems that run in time (for various ) for the
Permanent, Circuit-SAT for all sublinear-depth circuits, counting
Hamiltonian cycles, and infeasibility of - linear programs. In general,
the value of any polynomial in Valiant's class can be certified
faster than "exhaustive summation" over all possible assignments. These results
strongly refute a Merlin-Arthur Strong ETH and Arthur-Merlin Strong ETH posed
by Russell Impagliazzo and others.
We also give a three-round (AMA) proof system for quantified Boolean formulas
running in time, nearly-linear time MA-proof systems for
counting orthogonal vectors in a collection and finding Closest Pairs in the
Hamming metric, and a MA-proof system running in -time for
counting -cliques in graphs.
We point to some potential future directions for refuting the
Nondeterministic Strong ETH.Comment: 17 page
Consequences of APSP, triangle detection, and 3SUM hardness for separation between determinism and non-determinism
We present implications from the known conjectures like APSP, 3SUM and ETH in
a form of a negated containment of a linear-time with a non-deterministic
logarithmic-bit oracle in a respective deterministic bounded-time class They
are different for different conjectures and they exhibit in particular the
dependency on the input range parameters.Comment: The section on range reduction in the previous version contained a
flaw in a proof and therefore it has been remove
A PCP Characterization of AM
We introduce a 2-round stochastic constraint-satisfaction problem, and show
that its approximation version is complete for (the promise version of) the
complexity class AM. This gives a `PCP characterization' of AM analogous to the
PCP Theorem for NP. Similar characterizations have been given for higher levels
of the Polynomial Hierarchy, and for PSPACE; however, we suggest that the
result for AM might be of particular significance for attempts to derandomize
this class.
To test this notion, we pose some `Randomized Optimization Hypotheses'
related to our stochastic CSPs that (in light of our result) would imply
collapse results for AM. Unfortunately, the hypotheses appear over-strong, and
we present evidence against them. In the process we show that, if some language
in NP is hard-on-average against circuits of size 2^{Omega(n)}, then there
exist hard-on-average optimization problems of a particularly elegant form.
All our proofs use a powerful form of PCPs known as Probabilistically
Checkable Proofs of Proximity, and demonstrate their versatility. We also use
known results on randomness-efficient soundness- and hardness-amplification. In
particular, we make essential use of the Impagliazzo-Wigderson generator; our
analysis relies on a recent Chernoff-type theorem for expander walks.Comment: 18 page
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