Improved upper bound on root number of linearized polynomials and its application to nonlinearity estimation of Boolean functions

To determine the dimension of null space of any given linearized polynomial is one of vital problems in finite field theory, with concern to design of modern symmetric cryptosystems. But, the known general theory for this task is much far from giving the exact dimension when applied to a specific linearized polynomial. The first contribution of this paper is to give a better general method to get more precise upper bound on the root number of any given linearized polynomial. We anticipate this result would be applied as a useful tool in many research branches of finite field and cryptography. Really we apply this result to get tighter estimations of the lower bounds on the second order nonlinearities of general cubic Boolean functions, which has been being an active research problem during the past decade, with many examples showing great improvements. Furthermore, this paper shows that by studying the distribution of radicals of derivatives of a given Boolean functions one can get a better lower bound of the second-order nonlinearity, through an example of the monomial Boolean function $g_{\mu}=Tr(\mu x^{2^{2r}+2^r+1})$ over any finite field \GF{n}

NP-complete Problems and Physical Reality

Can NP-complete problems be solved efficiently in the physical universe? I survey proposals including soap bubbles, protein folding, quantum computing, quantum advice, quantum adiabatic algorithms, quantum-mechanical nonlinearities, hidden variables, relativistic time dilation, analog computing, Malament-Hogarth spacetimes, quantum gravity, closed timelike curves, and "anthropic computing." The section on soap bubbles even includes some "experimental" results. While I do not believe that any of the proposals will let us solve NP-complete problems efficiently, I argue that by studying them, we can learn something not only about computation but also about physics.Comment: 23 pages, minor correction

Complementary Sets, Generalized Reed-Muller Codes, and Power Control for OFDM

The use of error-correcting codes for tight control of the peak-to-mean envelope power ratio (PMEPR) in orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) transmission is considered in this correspondence. By generalizing a result by Paterson, it is shown that each q-phase (q is even) sequence of length 2^m lies in a complementary set of size 2^{k+1}, where k is a nonnegative integer that can be easily determined from the generalized Boolean function associated with the sequence. For small k this result provides a reasonably tight bound for the PMEPR of q-phase sequences of length 2^m. A new 2^h-ary generalization of the classical Reed-Muller code is then used together with the result on complementary sets to derive flexible OFDM coding schemes with low PMEPR. These codes include the codes developed by Davis and Jedwab as a special case. In certain situations the codes in the present correspondence are similar to Paterson's code constructions and often outperform them

On the Derivative Imbalance and Ambiguity of Functions

In 2007, Carlet and Ding introduced two parameters, denoted by $Nb_F$ and $NB_F$, quantifying respectively the balancedness of general functions $F$ between finite Abelian groups and the (global) balancedness of their derivatives $D_a F(x)=F(x+a)-F(x)$, $a\in G\setminus\{0\}$ (providing an indicator of the nonlinearity of the functions). These authors studied the properties and cryptographic significance of these two measures. They provided for S-boxes inequalities relating the nonlinearity $\mathcal{NL}(F)$ to $NB_F$, and obtained in particular an upper bound on the nonlinearity which unifies Sidelnikov-Chabaud-Vaudenay's bound and the covering radius bound. At the Workshop WCC 2009 and in its postproceedings in 2011, a further study of these parameters was made; in particular, the first parameter was applied to the functions $F+L$ where $L$ is affine, providing more nonlinearity parameters. In 2010, motivated by the study of Costas arrays, two parameters called ambiguity and deficiency were introduced by Panario \emph{et al.} for permutations over finite Abelian groups to measure the injectivity and surjectivity of the derivatives respectively. These authors also studied some fundamental properties and cryptographic significance of these two measures. Further studies followed without that the second pair of parameters be compared to the first one. In the present paper, we observe that ambiguity is the same parameter as $NB_F$, up to additive and multiplicative constants (i.e. up to rescaling). We make the necessary work of comparison and unification of the results on $NB_F$, respectively on ambiguity, which have been obtained in the five papers devoted to these parameters. We generalize some known results to any Abelian groups and we more importantly derive many new results on these parameters

Model predictive control techniques for hybrid systems

This paper describes the main issues encountered when applying model predictive control to hybrid processes. Hybrid model predictive control (HMPC) is a research field non-fully developed with many open challenges. The paper describes some of the techniques proposed by the research community to overcome the main problems encountered. Issues related to the stability and the solution of the optimization problem are also discussed. The paper ends by describing the results of a benchmark exercise in which several HMPC schemes were applied to a solar air conditioning plant.Ministerio de Eduación y Ciencia DPI2007-66718-C04-01Ministerio de Eduación y Ciencia DPI2008-0581

A quantum algorithm to estimate the Gowers U2U_2 norm and linearity testing of Boolean functions

We propose a quantum algorithm to estimate the Gowers $U_2$ norm of a Boolean function, and extend it into a second algorithm to distinguish between linear Boolean functions and Boolean functions that are $\epsilon$-far from the set of linear Boolean functions, which seems to perform better than the classical BLR algorithm. Finally, we outline an algorithm to estimate Gowers $U_3$ norms of Boolean functions

On lower bounds on second--order nonliearities of bent functions obtained by using Niho power functions

In this paper we find a lower bound of the second-order nonlinearities of Boolean bent functions of the form $f(x) = Tr_{1}^{n}(\alpha_{1}x^{d_{1}} + \alpha_{2}x^{d_{2}})$,where $d_1$ and $d_2$ are Niho exponents. A lower bound of the second-order nonlinearities of these Boolean functions can also be obtained by using a result proved by Li, Hu and Gao (eprint.iacr.org/2010 /009.pdf). It is demonstrated that for large values of $n$ the lower bound obtained in this paper are better than the lower bound obtained by Li, Hu and Gao