Constructing Small Tree Grammars and Small Circuits for Formulas

It is shown that every tree of size n over a fixed set of sigma different ranked symbols can be decomposed into O(n/log_sigma(n)) = O((n * log(sigma))/ log(n)) many hierarchically defined pieces. Formally, such a hierarchical decomposition has the form of a straight-line linear context-free tree grammar of size O(n/log_sigma(n)), which can be used as a compressed representation of the input tree. This generalizes an analogous result for strings. Previous grammar-based tree compressors were not analyzed for the worst-case size of the computed grammar, except for the top dag of Bille et al., for which only the weaker upper bound of O(n/log^{0.19}(n)) for unranked and unlabelled trees has been derived. The main result is used to show that every arithmetical formula of size n, in which only m <= n different variables occur, can be transformed (in time O(n * log(n)) into an arithmetical circuit of size O((n * log(m))/log(n)) and depth O(log(n)). This refines a classical result of Brent, according to which an arithmetical formula of size n can be transformed into a logarithmic depth circuit of size O(n)