Deterministic Identity Testing for Sum of Read-Once Oblivious Arithmetic Branching Programs

A read-once oblivious arithmetic branching program (ROABP) is an arithmetic branching program (ABP) where each variable occurs in at most one layer. We give the first polynomial time whitebox identity test for a polynomial computed by a sum of constantly many ROABPs. We also give a corresponding blackbox algorithm with quasi-polynomial time complexity $n^{O(\log n)}$. In both the cases, our time complexity is double exponential in the number of ROABPs. ROABPs are a generalization of set-multilinear depth-$3$ circuits. The prior results for the sum of constantly many set-multilinear depth-$3$ circuits were only slightly better than brute-force, i.e. exponential-time. Our techniques are a new interplay of three concepts for ROABP: low evaluation dimension, basis isolating weight assignment and low-support rank concentration. We relate basis isolation to rank concentration and extend it to a sum of two ROABPs using evaluation dimension (or partial derivatives).Comment: 22 pages, Computational Complexity Conference, 201

Separation Between Read-once Oblivious Algebraic Branching Programs (ROABPs) and Multilinear Depth Three Circuits

We show an exponential separation between two well-studied models of algebraic computation, namely read-once oblivious algebraic branching programs (ROABPs) and multilinear depth three circuits. In particular we show the following: 1. There exists an explicit n-variate polynomial computable by linear sized multilinear depth three circuits (with only two product gates) such that every ROABP computing it requires 2^{Omega(n)} size. 2. Any multilinear depth three circuit computing IMM_{n,d} (the iterated matrix multiplication polynomial formed by multiplying d, n * n symbolic matrices) has n^{Omega(d)} size. IMM_{n,d} can be easily computed by a poly(n,d) sized ROABP. 3. Further, the proof of 2 yields an exponential separation between multilinear depth four and multilinear depth three circuits: There is an explicit n-variate, degree d polynomial computable by a poly(n,d) sized multilinear depth four circuit such that any multilinear depth three circuit computing it has size n^{Omega(d)}. This improves upon the quasi-polynomial separation result by Raz and Yehudayoff [2009] between these two models. The hard polynomial in 1 is constructed using a novel application of expander graphs in conjunction with the evaluation dimension measure used previously in Nisan [1991], Raz [2006,2009], Raz and Yehudayoff [2009], and Forbes and Shpilka [2013], while 2 is proved via a new adaptation of the dimension of the partial derivatives measure used by Nisan and Wigderson [1997]. Our lower bounds hold over any field

Two-server distributed ORAM with sublinear computation and constant rounds

First author draf

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]

Sum of Products of Read-Once Formulas

We study limitations of polynomials computed by depth two circuits built over read-once formulas (ROFs). In particular, 1. We prove an exponential lower bound for the sum of ROFs computing the 2n-variate polynomial in VP defined by Raz and Yehudayoff [CC,2009]. 2. We obtain an exponential lower bound on the size of arithmetic circuits computing sum of products of restricted ROFs of unbounded depth computing the permanent of an n by n matrix. The restriction is on the number of variables with + gates as a parent in a proper sub formula of the ROF to be bounded by sqrt(n). Additionally, we restrict the product fan in to be bounded by a sub linear function. This proves an exponential lower bound for a subclass of possibly non-multilinear formulas of unbounded depth computing the permanent polynomial. 3. We also show an exponential lower bound for the above model against a polynomial in VP. 4. Finally we observe that the techniques developed yield an exponential lower bound on the size of sums of products of syntactically multilinear arithmetic circuits computing a product of variable disjoint linear forms where the bottom sum gate and product gates at the second level have fan in bounded by a sub linear function. Our proof techniques are built on the measure developed by Kumar et al.[ICALP 2013] and are based on a non-trivial analysis of ROFs under random partitions. Further, our results exhibit strengths and provide more insight into the lower bound techniques introduced by Raz [STOC 2004]

Improved Explicit Hitting-Sets for ROABPs

We give improved explicit constructions of hitting-sets for read-once oblivious algebraic branching programs (ROABPs) and related models. For ROABPs in an unknown variable order, our hitting-set has size polynomial in (nr)^{(log n)/(max{1, log log n-log log r})}d over a field whose characteristic is zero or large enough, where n is the number of variables, d is the individual degree, and r is the width of the ROABP. A similar improved construction works over fields of arbitrary characteristic with a weaker size bound. Based on a result of Bisht and Saxena (2020), we also give an improved explicit construction of hitting-sets for sum of several ROABPs. In particular, when the characteristic of the field is zero or large enough, we give polynomial-size explicit hitting-sets for sum of constantly many log-variate ROABPs of width r = 2^{O(log d/log log d)}. Finally, we give improved explicit hitting-sets for polynomials computable by width-r ROABPs in any variable order, also known as any-order ROABPs. Our hitting-set has polynomial size for width r up to 2^{O(log(nd)/log log(nd))} or 2^{O(log^{1-?} (nd))}, depending on the characteristic of the field. Previously, explicit hitting-sets of polynomial size are unknown for r = ?(1)