101 research outputs found
Completeness Results for Parameterized Space Classes
The parameterized complexity of a problem is considered "settled" once it has
been shown to lie in FPT or to be complete for a class in the W-hierarchy or a
similar parameterized hierarchy. Several natural parameterized problems have,
however, resisted such a classification. At least in some cases, the reason is
that upper and lower bounds for their parameterized space complexity have
recently been obtained that rule out completeness results for parameterized
time classes. In this paper, we make progress in this direction by proving that
the associative generability problem and the longest common subsequence problem
are complete for parameterized space classes. These classes are defined in
terms of different forms of bounded nondeterminism and in terms of simultaneous
time--space bounds. As a technical tool we introduce a "union operation" that
translates between problems complete for classical complexity classes and for
W-classes.Comment: IPEC 201
AND and/or OR: Uniform Polynomial-Size Circuits
We investigate the complexity of uniform OR circuits and AND circuits of
polynomial-size and depth. As their name suggests, OR circuits have OR gates as
their computation gates, as well as the usual input, output and constant (0/1)
gates. As is the norm for Boolean circuits, our circuits have multiple sink
gates, which implies that an OR circuit computes an OR function on some subset
of its input variables. Determining that subset amounts to solving a number of
reachability questions on a polynomial-size directed graph (which input gates
are connected to the output gate?), taken from a very sparse set of graphs.
However, it is not obvious whether or not this (restricted) reachability
problem can be solved, by say, uniform AC^0 circuits (constant depth,
polynomial-size, AND, OR, NOT gates). This is one reason why characterizing the
power of these simple-looking circuits in terms of uniform classes turns out to
be intriguing. Another is that the model itself seems particularly natural and
worthy of study.
Our goal is the systematic characterization of uniform polynomial-size OR
circuits, and AND circuits, in terms of known uniform machine-based complexity
classes. In particular, we consider the languages reducible to such uniform
families of OR circuits, and AND circuits, under a variety of reduction types.
We give upper and lower bounds on the computational power of these language
classes. We find that these complexity classes are closely related to tallyNL,
the set of unary languages within NL, and to sets reducible to tallyNL.
Specifically, for a variety of types of reductions (many-one, conjunctive truth
table, disjunctive truth table, truth table, Turing) we give characterizations
of languages reducible to OR circuit classes in terms of languages reducible to
tallyNL classes. Then, some of these OR classes are shown to coincide, and some
are proven to be distinct. We give analogous results for AND circuits. Finally,
for many of our OR circuit classes, and analogous AND circuit classes, we prove
whether or not the two classes coincide, although we leave one such inclusion
open.Comment: In Proceedings MCU 2013, arXiv:1309.104
On the Complexity of the Equivalence Problem for Probabilistic Automata
Checking two probabilistic automata for equivalence has been shown to be a
key problem for efficiently establishing various behavioural and anonymity
properties of probabilistic systems. In recent experiments a randomised
equivalence test based on polynomial identity testing outperformed
deterministic algorithms. In this paper we show that polynomial identity
testing yields efficient algorithms for various generalisations of the
equivalence problem. First, we provide a randomized NC procedure that also
outputs a counterexample trace in case of inequivalence. Second, we show how to
check for equivalence two probabilistic automata with (cumulative) rewards. Our
algorithm runs in deterministic polynomial time, if the number of reward
counters is fixed. Finally we show that the equivalence problem for
probabilistic visibly pushdown automata is logspace equivalent to the
Arithmetic Circuit Identity Testing problem, which is to decide whether a
polynomial represented by an arithmetic circuit is identically zero.Comment: technical report for a FoSSaCS'12 pape
The descriptive complexity approach to LOGCFL
Building upon the known generalized-quantifier-based first-order
characterization of LOGCFL, we lay the groundwork for a deeper investigation.
Specifically, we examine subclasses of LOGCFL arising from varying the arity
and nesting of groupoidal quantifiers. Our work extends the elaborate theory
relating monoidal quantifiers to NC1 and its subclasses. In the absence of the
BIT predicate, we resolve the main issues: we show in particular that no single
outermost unary groupoidal quantifier with FO can capture all the context-free
languages, and we obtain the surprising result that a variant of Greibach's
``hardest context-free language'' is LOGCFL-complete under quantifier-free
BIT-free projections. We then prove that FO with unary groupoidal quantifiers
is strictly more expressive with the BIT predicate than without. Considering a
particular groupoidal quantifier, we prove that first-order logic with majority
of pairs is strictly more expressive than first-order with majority of
individuals. As a technical tool of independent interest, we define the notion
of an aperiodic nondeterministic finite automaton and prove that FO
translations are precisely the mappings computed by single-valued aperiodic
nondeterministic finite transducers.Comment: 10 pages, 1 figur
Separating NOF communication complexity classes RP and NP
We provide a non-explicit separation of the number-on-forehead communication
complexity classes RP and NP when the number of players is up to \delta log(n)
for any \delta<1. Recent lower bounds on Set-Disjointness [LS08,CA08] provide
an explicit separation between these classes when the number of players is only
up to o(loglog(n))
An Atypical Survey of Typical-Case Heuristic Algorithms
Heuristic approaches often do so well that they seem to pretty much always
give the right answer. How close can heuristic algorithms get to always giving
the right answer, without inducing seismic complexity-theoretic consequences?
This article first discusses how a series of results by Berman, Buhrman,
Hartmanis, Homer, Longpr\'{e}, Ogiwara, Sch\"{o}ening, and Watanabe, from the
early 1970s through the early 1990s, explicitly or implicitly limited how well
heuristic algorithms can do on NP-hard problems. In particular, many desirable
levels of heuristic success cannot be obtained unless severe, highly unlikely
complexity class collapses occur. Second, we survey work initiated by Goldreich
and Wigderson, who showed how under plausible assumptions deterministic
heuristics for randomized computation can achieve a very high frequency of
correctness. Finally, we consider formal ways in which theory can help explain
the effectiveness of heuristics that solve NP-hard problems in practice.Comment: This article is currently scheduled to appear in the December 2012
issue of SIGACT New
The parameterized space complexity of model-checking bounded variable first-order logic
The parameterized model-checking problem for a class of first-order sentences
(queries) asks to decide whether a given sentence from the class holds true in
a given relational structure (database); the parameter is the length of the
sentence. We study the parameterized space complexity of the model-checking
problem for queries with a bounded number of variables. For each bound on the
quantifier alternation rank the problem becomes complete for the corresponding
level of what we call the tree hierarchy, a hierarchy of parameterized
complexity classes defined via space bounded alternating machines between
parameterized logarithmic space and fixed-parameter tractable time. We observe
that a parameterized logarithmic space model-checker for existential bounded
variable queries would allow to improve Savitch's classical simulation of
nondeterministic logarithmic space in deterministic space .
Further, we define a highly space efficient model-checker for queries with a
bounded number of variables and bounded quantifier alternation rank. We study
its optimality under the assumption that Savitch's Theorem is optimal
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