1,419 research outputs found
Gauge symmetries in spinfoam gravity: the case for "cellular quantization"
The spinfoam approach to quantum gravity rests on a "quantization" of BF
theory using 2-complexes and group representations. We explain why, in
dimension three and higher, this "spinfoam quantization" must be amended to be
made consistent with the gauge symmetries of discrete BF theory. We discuss a
suitable generalization, called "cellular quantization", which (1) is finite,
(2) produces a topological invariant, (3) matches with the properties of the
continuum BF theory, (4) corresponds to its loop quantization. These results
significantly clarify the foundations - and limitations - of the spinfoam
formalism, and open the path to understanding, in a discrete setting, the
symmetry-breaking which reduces BF theory to gravity.Comment: 6 page
Knapsack problems in products of groups
The classic knapsack and related problems have natural generalizations to
arbitrary (non-commutative) groups, collectively called knapsack-type problems
in groups. We study the effect of free and direct products on their time
complexity. We show that free products in certain sense preserve time
complexity of knapsack-type problems, while direct products may amplify it. Our
methods allow to obtain complexity results for rational subset membership
problem in amalgamated free products over finite subgroups.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures. Updated to include more general results, mostly
in Section
Dynamic Dominators and Low-High Orders in DAGs
We consider practical algorithms for maintaining the dominator tree and a low-high order in directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) subject to dynamic operations. Let G be a directed graph with a distinguished start vertex s. The dominator tree D of G is a tree rooted at s, such that a vertex v is an ancestor of a vertex w if and only if all paths from s to w in G include v. The dominator tree is a central tool in program optimization and code generation, and has many applications in other diverse areas including constraint programming, circuit testing, biology, and in algorithms for graph connectivity problems. A low-high order of G is a preorder of D that certifies the correctness of D, and has further applications in connectivity and path-determination problems.
We first provide a practical and carefully engineered version of a recent algorithm [ICALP 2017] for maintaining the dominator tree of a DAG through a sequence of edge deletions. The algorithm runs in O(mn) total time and O(m) space, where n is the number of vertices and m is the number of edges before any deletion. In addition, we present a new algorithm that maintains a low-high order of a DAG under edge deletions within the same bounds. Both results extend to the case of reducible graphs (a class that includes DAGs). Furthermore, we present a fully dynamic algorithm for maintaining the dominator tree of a DAG under an intermixed sequence of edge insertions and deletions. Although it does not maintain the O(mn) worst-case bound of the decremental algorithm, our experiments highlight that the fully dynamic algorithm performs very well in practice. Finally, we study the practical efficiency of all our algorithms by conducting an extensive experimental study on real-world and synthetic graphs
PPP-Completeness with Connections to Cryptography
Polynomial Pigeonhole Principle (PPP) is an important subclass of TFNP with
profound connections to the complexity of the fundamental cryptographic
primitives: collision-resistant hash functions and one-way permutations. In
contrast to most of the other subclasses of TFNP, no complete problem is known
for PPP. Our work identifies the first PPP-complete problem without any circuit
or Turing Machine given explicitly in the input, and thus we answer a
longstanding open question from [Papadimitriou1994]. Specifically, we show that
constrained-SIS (cSIS), a generalized version of the well-known Short Integer
Solution problem (SIS) from lattice-based cryptography, is PPP-complete.
In order to give intuition behind our reduction for constrained-SIS, we
identify another PPP-complete problem with a circuit in the input but closely
related to lattice problems. We call this problem BLICHFELDT and it is the
computational problem associated with Blichfeldt's fundamental theorem in the
theory of lattices.
Building on the inherent connection of PPP with collision-resistant hash
functions, we use our completeness result to construct the first natural hash
function family that captures the hardness of all collision-resistant hash
functions in a worst-case sense, i.e. it is natural and universal in the
worst-case. The close resemblance of our hash function family with SIS, leads
us to the first candidate collision-resistant hash function that is both
natural and universal in an average-case sense.
Finally, our results enrich our understanding of the connections between PPP,
lattice problems and other concrete cryptographic assumptions, such as the
discrete logarithm problem over general groups
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