Lower Bounds and PIT for Non-Commutative Arithmetic Circuits with Restricted Parse Trees

We investigate the power of Non-commutative Arithmetic Circuits, which compute polynomials over the free non-commutative polynomial ring F, where variables do not commute. We consider circuits that are restricted in the ways in which they can compute monomials: this can be seen as restricting the families of parse trees that appear in the circuit. Such restrictions capture essentially all non-commutative circuit models for which lower bounds are known. We prove several results about such circuits. - We show explicit exponential lower bounds for circuits with up to an exponential number of parse trees, strengthening the work of Lagarde, Malod, and Perifel (ECCC 2016), who prove such a result for Unique Parse Tree (UPT) circuits which have a single parse tree. - We show explicit exponential lower bounds for circuits whose parse trees are rotations of a single tree. This simultaneously generalizes recent lower bounds of Limaye, Malod, and Srinivasan (Theory of Computing 2016) and the above lower bounds of Lagarde et al., which are known to be incomparable. - We make progress on a question of Nisan (STOC 1991) regarding separating the power of Algebraic Branching Programs (ABPs) and Formulas in the non-commutative setting by showing a tight lower bound of n^{Omega(log d)} for any UPT formula computing the product of d n*n matrices. When d <= log n, we can also prove superpolynomial lower bounds for formulas with up to 2^{o(d)} many parse trees (for computing the same polynomial). Improving this bound to allow for 2^{O(d)} trees would yield an unconditional separation between ABPs and Formulas. - We give deterministic white-box PIT algorithms for UPT circuits over any field (strengthening a result of Lagarde et al. (2016)) and also for sums of a constant number of UPT circuits with different parse trees

Quasipolynomial Hitting Sets for Circuits with Restricted Parse Trees

We study the class of non-commutative Unambiguous circuits or Unique-Parse-Tree (UPT) circuits, and a related model of Few-Parse-Trees (FewPT) circuits (which were recently introduced by Lagarde, Malod and Perifel [Guillaume Lagarde et al., 2016] and Lagarde, Limaye and Srinivasan [Guillaume Lagarde et al., 2017]) and give the following constructions: - An explicit hitting set of quasipolynomial size for UPT circuits, - An explicit hitting set of quasipolynomial size for FewPT circuits (circuits with constantly many parse tree shapes), - An explicit hitting set of polynomial size for UPT circuits (of known parse tree shape), when a parameter of preimage-width is bounded by a constant. The above three results are extensions of the results of [Manindra Agrawal et al., 2015], [Rohit Gurjar et al., 2015] and [Rohit Gurjar et al., 2016] to the setting of UPT circuits, and hence also generalize their results in the commutative world from read-once oblivious algebraic branching programs (ROABPs) to UPT-set-multilinear circuits. The main idea is to study shufflings of non-commutative polynomials, which can then be used to prove suitable depth reduction results for UPT circuits and thereby allow a careful translation of the ideas in [Manindra Agrawal et al., 2015], [Rohit Gurjar et al., 2015] and [Rohit Gurjar et al., 2016]

Efficient Identity Testing and Polynomial Factorization in Nonassociative Free Rings

In this paper we study arithmetic computations in the nonassociative, and noncommutative free polynomial ring F{X}. Prior to this work, nonassociative arithmetic computation was considered by Hrubes, Wigderson, and Yehudayoff, and they showed lower bounds and proved completeness results. We consider Polynomial Identity Testing and Polynomial Factorization in F{X} and show the following results. 1. Given an arithmetic circuit C computing a polynomial f in F{X} of degree d, we give a deterministic polynomial algorithm to decide if f is identically zero. Our result is obtained by a suitable adaptation of the PIT algorithm of Raz and Shpilka for noncommutative ABPs. 2. Given an arithmetic circuit C computing a polynomial f in F{X} of degree d, we give an efficient deterministic algorithm to compute circuits for the irreducible factors of f in polynomial time when F is the field of rationals. Over finite fields of characteristic p, our algorithm runs in time polynomial in input size and p

Separating ABPs and Some Structured Formulas in the Non-Commutative Setting

The motivating question for this work is a long standing open problem, posed by Nisan (1991), regarding the relative powers of algebraic branching programs (ABPs) and formulas in the non-commutative setting. Even though the general question continues to remain open, we make some progress towards its resolution. To that effect, we generalise the notion of ordered polynomials in the non-commutative setting (defined by \Hrubes, Wigderson and Yehudayoff (2011)) to define abecedarian polynomials and models that naturally compute them. Our main contribution is a possible new approach towards separating formulas and ABPs in the non-commutative setting, via lower bounds against abecedarian formulas. In particular, we show the following. There is an explicit n-variate degree d abecedarian polynomial $f_{n,d}(x)$ such that 1. $f_{n, d}(x)$ can be computed by an abecedarian ABP of size O(nd); 2. any abecedarian formula computing $f_{n, \log n}(x)$ must have size that is super-polynomial in n. We also show that a super-polynomial lower bound against abecedarian formulas for $f_{\log n, n}(x)$ would separate the powers of formulas and ABPs in the non-commutative setting

Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems

This open access book constitutes the proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems, TACAS 2022, which was held during April 2-7, 2022, in Munich, Germany, as part of the European Joint Conferences on Theory and Practice of Software, ETAPS 2022. The 46 full papers and 4 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 159 submissions. The proceedings also contain 16 tool papers of the affiliated competition SV-Comp and 1 paper consisting of the competition report. TACAS is a forum for researchers, developers, and users interested in rigorously based tools and algorithms for the construction and analysis of systems. The conference aims to bridge the gaps between different communities with this common interest and to support them in their quest to improve the utility, reliability, exibility, and efficiency of tools and algorithms for building computer-controlled systems

Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems

This open access book constitutes the proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems, TACAS 2022, which was held during April 2-7, 2022, in Munich, Germany, as part of the European Joint Conferences on Theory and Practice of Software, ETAPS 2022. The 46 full papers and 4 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 159 submissions. The proceedings also contain 16 tool papers of the affiliated competition SV-Comp and 1 paper consisting of the competition report. TACAS is a forum for researchers, developers, and users interested in rigorously based tools and algorithms for the construction and analysis of systems. The conference aims to bridge the gaps between different communities with this common interest and to support them in their quest to improve the utility, reliability, exibility, and efficiency of tools and algorithms for building computer-controlled systems

Zero Knowledge Protocols and Applications

The historical goal of cryptography is to securely transmit or store a message in an insecure medium. In that era, before public key cryptography, we had two kinds of people: those who had the correct key, and those who did not. Nowadays however, we live in a complex world with equally complex goals and requirements: securely passing a note from Alice to Bob is not enough. We want Alice to use her smartphone to vote for Carol, without Bob the tallier, or anyone else learning her vote; we also want guarantees that Alice’s ballot contains a single, valid vote and we want guarantees that Bob will tally the ballots properly. This is in fact made possible because of zero knowledge protocols. This thesis presents research performed in the area of zero knowledge protocols across the following threads: we relax the assumptions necessary for the Damgard, Fazio and ˚ Nicolosi (DFN) transformation, a technique which enables one to collapse a number of three round protocols into a single message. This approach is motivated by showing how it could be used as part of a voting scheme. Then we move onto a protocol that lets us prove that a given computation (modeled as an arithmetic circuit) was performed correctly. It improves upon the state of the art in the area by significantly reducing the communication cost. A second strand of research concerns multi-user signatures, which enable a signer to sign with respect to a set of users. We give new definitions for important primitives in the area as well as efficient instantiations using zero knowledge protocols. Finally, we present two possible answers to the question posed by voting receipts. One is to maximise privacy by building a voting system that provides receipt-freeness automatically. The other is to use them to enable conventual and privacy preserving vote copying