Multi-k-ic Depth Three Circuit Lower Bound

In a multi-k-ic depth three circuit every variable appears in at most k of the linear polynomials in every product gate of the circuit. This model is a natural generalization of multilinear depth three circuits that allows the formal degree of the circuit to exceed the number of underlying variables (as the formal degree of a multi-k-ic depth three circuit can be kn where n is the number of variables). The problem of proving lower bounds for depth three circuits with high formal degree has gained in importance following a work by Gupta, Kamath, Kayal and Saptharishi [7] on depth reduction to high formal degree depth three circuits. In this work, we show an exponential lower bound for multi-k-ic depth three circuits for any arbitrary constant k

Multi-k-ic depth three circuit lower bound

Abstract In a multi-k-ic depth three circuit every variable appears in at most k of the linear polynomials in every product gate of the circuit. This model is a natural generalization of multilinear depth three circuits that allows the formal degree of the circuit to exceed the number of underlying variables (as the formal degree of a multi-k-ic depth three circuit can be kn where n is the number of variables). The problem of proving lower bounds for depth three circuits with high formal degree has gained in importance following a work by Gupta, Kamath, Kayal and Saptharishi [GKKS13a] on depth reduction to high formal degree depth three circuits. In this work, we show an exponential lower bound for multi-k-ic depth three circuits for any arbitrary constant k

On Computing Multilinear Polynomials Using Multi-r-ic Depth Four Circuits

International audienceIn this paper, we are interested in understanding the complexity of computing multilinear polynomials using depth four circuits in which polynomial computed at every node has a bound on the individual degree of r (referred to as multi-r-ic circuits). The goal of this study is to make progress towards proving superpolynomial lower bounds for general depth four circuits computing multilinear polynomials, by proving better and better bounds as the value of r increases. Recently, Kayal, Saha and Tavenas (Theory of Computing, 2018) showed that any depth four arithmetic circuit of bounded individual degree r computing a multilinear polynomial on n^O(1) variables and degree d = o(n), must have size at least (n/r^1.1)^{\sqrt{d/r}} when r is o(d) and is strictly less than n^1/1.1. This bound however deteriorates with increasing r. It is a natural question to ask if we can prove a bound that does not deteriorate with increasing r or a bound that holds for a larger regime of r. We here prove a lower bound which does not deteriorate with r , however for a specific instance of d = d (n) but for a wider range of r. Formally, we show that there exists an explicit polynomial on n^{O(1)} variables and degree Θ(log^2(n)) such that any depth four circuit of bounded individual degree r < n^0.2 must have size at least exp(Ω (log^2 n)). This improvement is obtained by suitably adapting the complexity measure of Kayal et al. (Theory of Computing, 2018). This adaptation of the measure is inspired by the complexity measure used by Kayal et al. (SIAM J. Computing, 2017)

Shallow Circuits with High-Powered Inputs

A polynomial identity testing algorithm must determine whether an input polynomial (given for instance by an arithmetic circuit) is identically equal to 0. In this paper, we show that a deterministic black-box identity testing algorithm for (high-degree) univariate polynomials would imply a lower bound on the arithmetic complexity of the permanent. The lower bounds that are known to follow from derandomization of (low-degree) multivariate identity testing are weaker. To obtain our lower bound it would be sufficient to derandomize identity testing for polynomials of a very specific norm: sums of products of sparse polynomials with sparse coefficients. This observation leads to new versions of the Shub-Smale tau-conjecture on integer roots of univariate polynomials. In particular, we show that a lower bound for the permanent would follow if one could give a good enough bound on the number of real roots of sums of products of sparse polynomials (Descartes' rule of signs gives such a bound for sparse polynomials and products thereof). In this third version of our paper we show that the same lower bound would follow even if one could only prove a slightly superpolynomial upper bound on the number of real roots. This is a consequence of a new result on reduction to depth 4 for arithmetic circuits which we establish in a companion paper. We also show that an even weaker bound on the number of real roots would suffice to obtain a lower bound on the size of depth 4 circuits computing the permanent.Comment: A few typos correcte

On the size of homogeneous and of depth four formulas with low individual degree

International audienceLet r ≥ 1 be an integer. Let us call a polynomial f (x_1,...,x_N) ∈ F[x] as a multi-r-ic polynomial if the degree of f with respect to any variable is at most r (this generalizes the notion of multilinear polynomials). We investigate arithmetic circuits in which the output is syntactically forced to be a multi-r-ic polynomial and refer to these as multi-r-ic circuits. We prove lower bounds for several subclasses of such circuits. Specifically, first define the formal degree of a node α with respect to a variable x_i inductively as follows. For a leaf α it is 1 if α is labelled with x_i and zero otherwise; for an internal node α labelled with × (respectively +) it is the sum of (respectively the maximum of) the formal degrees of the children with respect to x_i. We call an arithmetic circuit as a multi-r-ic circuit if the formal degree of the output node with respect to any variable is at most r. We prove lower bounds for various subclasses of multi-r-ic circuits