1,509 research outputs found
Different Approaches to Proof Systems
The classical approach to proof complexity perceives proof systems as deterministic, uniform, surjective, polynomial-time computable functions that map strings to (propositional) tautologies. This approach has been intensively studied since the late 70’s and a lot of progress has been made. During the last years research was started investigating alternative notions of proof systems. There are interesting results stemming from dropping the uniformity requirement, allowing oracle access, using quantum computations, or employing probabilism. These lead to different notions of proof systems for which we survey recent results in this paper
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
Epistemic virtues, metavirtues, and computational complexity
I argue that considerations about computational complexity show that all finite agents need characteristics like those that have been called epistemic virtues. The necessity of these virtues follows in part from the nonexistence of shortcuts, or efficient ways of finding shortcuts, to cognitively expensive routines. It follows that agents must possess the capacities – metavirtues –of developing in advance the cognitive virtues they will need when time and memory are at a premium
Unary Pushdown Automata and Straight-Line Programs
We consider decision problems for deterministic pushdown automata over a
unary alphabet (udpda, for short). Udpda are a simple computation model that
accept exactly the unary regular languages, but can be exponentially more
succinct than finite-state automata. We complete the complexity landscape for
udpda by showing that emptiness (and thus universality) is P-hard, equivalence
and compressed membership problems are P-complete, and inclusion is
coNP-complete. Our upper bounds are based on a translation theorem between
udpda and straight-line programs over the binary alphabet (SLPs). We show that
the characteristic sequence of any udpda can be represented as a pair of
SLPs---one for the prefix, one for the lasso---that have size linear in the
size of the udpda and can be computed in polynomial time. Hence, decision
problems on udpda are reduced to decision problems on SLPs. Conversely, any SLP
can be converted in logarithmic space into a udpda, and this forms the basis
for our lower bound proofs. We show coNP-hardness of the ordered matching
problem for SLPs, from which we derive coNP-hardness for inclusion. In
addition, we complete the complexity landscape for unary nondeterministic
pushdown automata by showing that the universality problem is -hard, using a new class of integer expressions. Our techniques have
applications beyond udpda. We show that our results imply -completeness for a natural fragment of Presburger arithmetic and coNP lower
bounds for compressed matching problems with one-character wildcards
A Casual Tour Around a Circuit Complexity Bound
I will discuss the recent proof that the complexity class NEXP
(nondeterministic exponential time) lacks nonuniform ACC circuits of polynomial
size. The proof will be described from the perspective of someone trying to
discover it.Comment: 21 pages, 2 figures. An earlier version appeared in SIGACT News,
September 201
Nondeterministic functions and the existence of optimal proof systems
We provide new characterizations of two previously studied questions on nondeterministic function classes: Q1: Do nondeterministic functions admit efficient deterministic refinements? Q2: Do nondeterministic function classes contain complete functions? We show that Q1 for the class is equivalent to the question whether the standard proof system for SAT is p-optimal, and to the assumption that every optimal proof system is p-optimal. Assuming only the existence of a p-optimal proof system for SAT, we show that every set with an optimal proof system has a p-optimal proof system. Under the latter assumption, we also obtain a positive answer to Q2 for the class . An alternative view on nondeterministic functions is provided by disjoint sets and tuples. We pursue this approach for disjoint -pairs and its generalizations to tuples of sets from and with disjointness conditions of varying strength. In this way, we obtain new characterizations of Q2 for the class . Question Q1 for is equivalent to the question of whether every disjoint -pair is easy to separate. In addition, we characterize this problem by the question of whether every propositional proof system has the effective interpolation property. Again, these interpolation properties are intimately connected to disjoint -pairs, and we show how different interpolation properties can be modeled by -pairs associated with the underlying proof system
Toward accurate polynomial evaluation in rounded arithmetic
Given a multivariate real (or complex) polynomial and a domain ,
we would like to decide whether an algorithm exists to evaluate
accurately for all using rounded real (or complex) arithmetic.
Here ``accurately'' means with relative error less than 1, i.e., with some
correct leading digits. The answer depends on the model of rounded arithmetic:
We assume that for any arithmetic operator , for example or , its computed value is , where is bounded by some constant where , but
is otherwise arbitrary. This model is the traditional one used to
analyze the accuracy of floating point algorithms.Our ultimate goal is to
establish a decision procedure that, for any and , either exhibits
an accurate algorithm or proves that none exists. In contrast to the case where
numbers are stored and manipulated as finite bit strings (e.g., as floating
point numbers or rational numbers) we show that some polynomials are
impossible to evaluate accurately. The existence of an accurate algorithm will
depend not just on and , but on which arithmetic operators and
which constants are are available and whether branching is permitted. Toward
this goal, we present necessary conditions on for it to be accurately
evaluable on open real or complex domains . We also give sufficient
conditions, and describe progress toward a complete decision procedure. We do
present a complete decision procedure for homogeneous polynomials with
integer coefficients, {\cal D} = \C^n, and using only the arithmetic
operations , and .Comment: 54 pages, 6 figures; refereed version; to appear in Foundations of
Computational Mathematics: Santander 2005, Cambridge University Press, March
200
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