Reversible Proofs of Sequential Work

Proofs of sequential work (PoSW) are proof systems where a prover, upon receiving a statement $\chi$ and a time parameter $T$ computes a proof $\phi(\chi,T)$ which is efficiently and publicly verifiable. The proof can be computed in $T$ sequential steps, but not much less, even by a malicious party having large parallelism. A PoSW thus serves as a proof that $T$ units of time have passed since $\chi$ was received. PoSW were introduced by Mahmoody, Moran and Vadhan [MMV11], a simple and practical construction was only recently proposed by Cohen and Pietrzak [CP18]. In this work we construct a new simple PoSW in the random permutation model which is almost as simple and efficient as [CP18] but conceptually very different. Whereas the structure underlying [CP18] is a hash tree, our construction is based on skip lists and has the interesting property that computing the PoSW is a reversible computation. The fact that the construction is reversible can potentially be used for new applications like constructing \emph{proofs of replication}. We also show how to ``embed the sloth function of Lenstra and Weselowski [LW17] into our PoSW to get a PoSW where one additionally can verify correctness of the output much more efficiently than recomputing it (though recent constructions of ``verifiable delay functions subsume most of the applications this construction was aiming at)

Reversible Proofs of Sequential Work

Proofs of sequential work (PoSW) are proof systems where a prover, upon receiving a statement $\chi$ and a time parameter $T$ computes a proof $\phi(\chi,T)$ which is efficiently and publicly verifiable. The proof can be computed in $T$ sequential steps, but not much less, even by a malicious party having large parallelism. A PoSW thus serves as a proof that $T$ units of time have passed since $\chi$ was received. PoSW were introduced by Mahmoody, Moran and Vadhan [MMV11], a simple and practical construction was only recently proposed by Cohen and Pietrzak [CP18]. In this work we construct a new simple PoSW in the random permutation model which is almost as simple and efficient as [CP18] but conceptually very different. Whereas the structure underlying [CP18] is a hash tree, our construction is based on skip lists and has the interesting property that computing the PoSW is a reversible computation. The fact that the construction is reversible can potentially be used for new applications like constructing \emph{proofs of replication}. We also show how to ``embed the sloth function of Lenstra and Weselowski [LW17] into our PoSW to get a PoSW where one additionally can verify correctness of the output much more efficiently than recomputing it (though recent constructions of ``verifiable delay functions subsume most of the applications this construction was aiming at)

Reversible Proofs of Sequential Work

Proofs of sequential work (PoSW) are proof systems where a prover, upon receiving a statement $\chi$ and a time parameter $T$ computes a proof $\phi(\chi,T)$ which is efficiently and publicly verifiable. The proof can be computed in $T$ sequential steps, but not much less, even by a malicious party having large parallelism. A PoSW thus serves as a proof that $T$ units of time have passed since $\chi$ was received. PoSW were introduced by Mahmoody, Moran and Vadhan [MMV11], a simple and practical construction was only recently proposed by Cohen and Pietrzak [CP18]. In this work we construct a new simple PoSW in the random permutation model which is almost as simple and efficient as [CP18] but conceptually very different. Whereas the structure underlying [CP18] is a hash tree, our construction is based on skip lists and has the interesting property that computing the PoSW is a reversible computation. The fact that the construction is reversible can potentially be used for new applications like constructing \emph{proofs of replication}. We also show how to ``embed the sloth function of Lenstra and Weselowski [LW17] into our PoSW to get a PoSW where one additionally can verify correctness of the output much more efficiently than recomputing it (though recent constructions of ``verifiable delay functions subsume most of the applications this construction was aiming at)

A complete graphical calculus for Spekkens' toy bit theory

While quantum theory cannot be described by a local hidden variable model, it is nevertheless possible to construct such models that exhibit features commonly associated with quantum mechanics. These models are also used to explore the question of {\psi}-ontic versus {\psi}-epistemic theories for quantum mechanics. Spekkens' toy theory is one such model. It arises from classical probabilistic mechanics via a limit on the knowledge an observer may have about the state of a system. The toy theory for the simplest possible underlying system closely resembles stabilizer quantum mechanics, a fragment of quantum theory which is efficiently classically simulable but also non-local. Further analysis of the similarities and differences between those two theories can thus yield new insights into what distinguishes quantum theory from classical theories, and {\psi}-ontic from {\psi}-epistemic theories. In this paper, we develop a graphical language for Spekkens' toy theory. Graphical languages offer intuitive and rigorous formalisms for the analysis of quantum mechanics and similar theories. To compare quantum mechanics and a toy model, it is useful to have similar formalisms for both. We show that our language fully describes Spekkens' toy theory and in particular, that it is complete: meaning any equality that can be derived using other formalisms can also be derived entirely graphically. Our language is inspired by a similar graphical language for quantum mechanics called the ZX-calculus. Thus Spekkens' toy bit theory and stabilizer quantum mechanics can be analysed and compared using analogous graphical formalisms.Comment: Major revisions for v2. 22+7 page

Topology Inspired Problems for Cellular Automata, and a Counterexample in Topology

We consider two relatively natural topologizations of the set of all cellular automata on a fixed alphabet. The first turns out to be rather pathological, in that the countable space becomes neither first-countable nor sequential. Also, reversible automata form a closed set, while surjective ones are dense. The second topology, which is induced by a metric, is studied in more detail. Continuity of composition (under certain restrictions) and inversion, as well as closedness of the set of surjective automata, are proved, and some counterexamples are given. We then generalize this space, in the sense that every shift-invariant measure on the configuration space induces a pseudometric on cellular automata, and study the properties of these spaces. We also characterize the pseudometric spaces using the Besicovitch distance, and show a connection to the first (pathological) space.Comment: In Proceedings AUTOMATA&JAC 2012, arXiv:1208.249

Probabilistic theories with purification

We investigate general probabilistic theories in which every mixed state has a purification, unique up to reversible channels on the purifying system. We show that the purification principle is equivalent to the existence of a reversible realization of every physical process, namely that every physical process can be regarded as arising from a reversible interaction of the system with an environment, which is eventually discarded. From the purification principle we also construct an isomorphism between transformations and bipartite states that possesses all structural properties of the Choi-Jamiolkowski isomorphism in quantum mechanics. Such an isomorphism allows one to prove most of the basic features of quantum mechanics, like e.g. existence of pure bipartite states giving perfect correlations in independent experiments, no information without disturbance, no joint discrimination of all pure states, no cloning, teleportation, no programming, no bit commitment, complementarity between correctable channels and deletion channels, characterization of entanglement-breaking channels as measure-and-prepare channels, and others, without resorting to the mathematical framework of Hilbert spaces.Comment: Differing from the journal version, this version includes a table of contents and makes extensive use of boldface type to highlight the contents of the main theorems. It includes a self-contained introduction to the framework of general probabilistic theories and a discussion about the role of causality and local discriminabilit

Universal lossless source coding with the Burrows Wheeler transform

The Burrows Wheeler transform (1994) is a reversible sequence transformation used in a variety of practical lossless source-coding algorithms. In each, the BWT is followed by a lossless source code that attempts to exploit the natural ordering of the BWT coefficients. BWT-based compression schemes are widely touted as low-complexity algorithms giving lossless coding rates better than those of the Ziv-Lempel codes (commonly known as LZ'77 and LZ'78) and almost as good as those achieved by prediction by partial matching (PPM) algorithms. To date, the coding performance claims have been made primarily on the basis of experimental results. This work gives a theoretical evaluation of BWT-based coding. The main results of this theoretical evaluation include: (1) statistical characterizations of the BWT output on both finite strings and sequences of length n → ∞, (2) a variety of very simple new techniques for BWT-based lossless source coding, and (3) proofs of the universality and bounds on the rates of convergence of both new and existing BWT-based codes for finite-memory and stationary ergodic sources. The end result is a theoretical justification and validation of the experimentally derived conclusions: BWT-based lossless source codes achieve universal lossless coding performance that converges to the optimal coding performance more quickly than the rate of convergence observed in Ziv-Lempel style codes and, for some BWT-based codes, within a constant factor of the optimal rate of convergence for finite-memory source

Finite Open-World Query Answering with Number Restrictions (Extended Version)

Open-world query answering is the problem of deciding, given a set of facts, conjunction of constraints, and query, whether the facts and constraints imply the query. This amounts to reasoning over all instances that include the facts and satisfy the constraints. We study finite open-world query answering (FQA), which assumes that the underlying world is finite and thus only considers the finite completions of the instance. The major known decidable cases of FQA derive from the following: the guarded fragment of first-order logic, which can express referential constraints (data in one place points to data in another) but cannot express number restrictions such as functional dependencies; and the guarded fragment with number restrictions but on a signature of arity only two. In this paper, we give the first decidability results for FQA that combine both referential constraints and number restrictions for arbitrary signatures: we show that, for unary inclusion dependencies and functional dependencies, the finiteness assumption of FQA can be lifted up to taking the finite implication closure of the dependencies. Our result relies on new techniques to construct finite universal models of such constraints, for any bound on the maximal query size.Comment: 59 pages. To appear in LICS 2015. Extended version including proof