Deterministic Identity Testing for Sum of Read-Once Oblivious Arithmetic Branching Programs

A read-once oblivious arithmetic branching program (ROABP) is an arithmetic branching program (ABP) where each variable occurs in at most one layer. We give the first polynomial time whitebox identity test for a polynomial computed by a sum of constantly many ROABPs. We also give a corresponding blackbox algorithm with quasi-polynomial time complexity $n^{O(\log n)}$. In both the cases, our time complexity is double exponential in the number of ROABPs. ROABPs are a generalization of set-multilinear depth-$3$ circuits. The prior results for the sum of constantly many set-multilinear depth-$3$ circuits were only slightly better than brute-force, i.e. exponential-time. Our techniques are a new interplay of three concepts for ROABP: low evaluation dimension, basis isolating weight assignment and low-support rank concentration. We relate basis isolation to rank concentration and extend it to a sum of two ROABPs using evaluation dimension (or partial derivatives).Comment: 22 pages, Computational Complexity Conference, 201

Matroid Intersection: A Pseudo-Deterministic Parallel Reduction from Search to Weighted-Decision

We study the matroid intersection problem from the parallel complexity perspective. Given two matroids over the same ground set, the problem asks to decide whether they have a common base and its search version asks to find a common base, if one exists. Another widely studied variant is the weighted decision version where with the two matroids, we are given small weights on the ground set elements and a target weight W, and the question is to decide whether there is a common base of weight at least W. From the perspective of parallel complexity, the relation between the search and the decision versions is not well understood. We make a significant progress on this question by giving a pseudo-deterministic parallel (NC) algorithm for the search version that uses an oracle access to the weighted decision. The notion of pseudo-deterministic NC was recently introduced by Goldwasser and Grossman [Shafi Goldwasser and Ofer Grossman, 2017], which is a relaxation of NC. A pseudo-deterministic NC algorithm for a search problem is a randomized NC algorithm that, for a given input, outputs a fixed solution with high probability. In case the given matroids are linearly representable, our result implies a pseudo-deterministic NC algorithm (without the weighted decision oracle). This resolves an open question posed by Anari and Vazirani [Nima Anari and Vijay V. Vazirani, 2020]

Improved Explicit Hitting-Sets for ROABPs

We give improved explicit constructions of hitting-sets for read-once oblivious algebraic branching programs (ROABPs) and related models. For ROABPs in an unknown variable order, our hitting-set has size polynomial in (nr)^{(log n)/(max{1, log log n-log log r})}d over a field whose characteristic is zero or large enough, where n is the number of variables, d is the individual degree, and r is the width of the ROABP. A similar improved construction works over fields of arbitrary characteristic with a weaker size bound. Based on a result of Bisht and Saxena (2020), we also give an improved explicit construction of hitting-sets for sum of several ROABPs. In particular, when the characteristic of the field is zero or large enough, we give polynomial-size explicit hitting-sets for sum of constantly many log-variate ROABPs of width r = 2^{O(log d/log log d)}. Finally, we give improved explicit hitting-sets for polynomials computable by width-r ROABPs in any variable order, also known as any-order ROABPs. Our hitting-set has polynomial size for width r up to 2^{O(log(nd)/log log(nd))} or 2^{O(log^{1-?} (nd))}, depending on the characteristic of the field. Previously, explicit hitting-sets of polynomial size are unknown for r = ?(1)

Pseudorandom Bits for Oblivious Branching Programs

We construct a pseudorandom generator that fools known-order read-k oblivious branching programs and, more generally, any linear length oblivious branching program. For polynomial width branching programs, the seed lengths in our constructions are O(n^(1−1/2^(k−1))) (for the read-k case) and O(n/log log n) (for the linear length case). Previously, the best construction for these models required seed length (1 − Ω(1))n