Satisfiability in multi-valued circuits

Satisfiability of Boolean circuits is among the most known and important problems in theoretical computer science. This problem is NP-complete in general but becomes polynomial time when restricted either to monotone gates or linear gates. We go outside Boolean realm and consider circuits built of any fixed set of gates on an arbitrary large finite domain. From the complexity point of view this is strictly connected with the problems of solving equations (or systems of equations) over finite algebras. The research reported in this work was motivated by a desire to know for which finite algebras $\mathbf A$ there is a polynomial time algorithm that decides if an equation over $\mathbf A$ has a solution. We are also looking for polynomial time algorithms that decide if two circuits over a finite algebra compute the same function. Although we have not managed to solve these problems in the most general setting we have obtained such a characterization for a very broad class of algebras from congruence modular varieties. This class includes most known and well-studied algebras such as groups, rings, modules (and their generalizations like quasigroups, loops, near-rings, nonassociative rings, Lie algebras), lattices (and their extensions like Boolean algebras, Heyting algebras or other algebras connected with multi-valued logics including MV-algebras). This paper seems to be the first systematic study of the computational complexity of satisfiability of non-Boolean circuits and solving equations over finite algebras. The characterization results provided by the paper is given in terms of nice structural properties of algebras for which the problems are solvable in polynomial time.Comment: 50 page

Complex Algebras of Arithmetic

An 'arithmetic circuit' is a labeled, acyclic directed graph specifying a sequence of arithmetic and logical operations to be performed on sets of natural numbers. Arithmetic circuits can also be viewed as the elements of the smallest subalgebra of the complex algebra of the semiring of natural numbers. In the present paper, we investigate the algebraic structure of complex algebras of natural numbers, and make some observations regarding the complexity of various theories of such algebras

Intermediate problems in modular circuits satisfiability

In arXiv:1710.08163 a generalization of Boolean circuits to arbitrary finite algebras had been introduced and applied to sketch P versus NP-complete borderline for circuits satisfiability over algebras from congruence modular varieties. However the problem for nilpotent (which had not been shown to be NP-hard) but not supernilpotent algebras (which had been shown to be polynomial time) remained open. In this paper we provide a broad class of examples, lying in this grey area, and show that, under the Exponential Time Hypothesis and Strong Exponential Size Hypothesis (saying that Boolean circuits need exponentially many modular counting gates to produce boolean conjunctions of any arity), satisfiability over these algebras have intermediate complexity between $\Omega(2^{c\log^{h-1} n})$ and $O(2^{c\log^h n})$, where $h$ measures how much a nilpotent algebra fails to be supernilpotent. We also sketch how these examples could be used as paradigms to fill the nilpotent versus supernilpotent gap in general. Our examples are striking in view of the natural strong connections between circuits satisfiability and Constraint Satisfaction Problem for which the dichotomy had been shown by Bulatov and Zhuk

Reasoning on Schemata of Formulae

A logic is presented for reasoning on iterated sequences of formulae over some given base language. The considered sequences, or "schemata", are defined inductively, on some algebraic structure (for instance the natural numbers, the lists, the trees etc.). A proof procedure is proposed to relate the satisfiability problem for schemata to that of finite disjunctions of base formulae. It is shown that this procedure is sound, complete and terminating, hence the basic computational properties of the base language can be carried over to schemata

Uniform Diagonalization Theorem for Complexity Classes of Promise Problems including Randomized and Quantum Classes

Diagonalization in the spirit of Cantor's diagonal arguments is a widely used tool in theoretical computer sciences to obtain structural results about computational problems and complexity classes by indirect proofs. The Uniform Diagonalization Theorem allows the construction of problems outside complexity classes while still being reducible to a specific decision problem. This paper provides a generalization of the Uniform Diagonalization Theorem by extending it to promise problems and the complexity classes they form, e.g. randomized and quantum complexity classes. The theorem requires from the underlying computing model not only the decidability of its acceptance and rejection behaviour but also of its promise-contradicting indifferent behaviour - a property that we will introduce as "total decidability" of promise problems. Implications of the Uniform Diagonalization Theorem are mainly of two kinds: 1. Existence of intermediate problems (e.g. between BQP and QMA) - also known as Ladner's Theorem - and 2. Undecidability if a problem of a complexity class is contained in a subclass (e.g. membership of a QMA-problem in BQP). Like the original Uniform Diagonalization Theorem the extension applies besides BQP and QMA to a large variety of complexity class pairs, including combinations from deterministic, randomized and quantum classes.Comment: 15 page

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