494 research outputs found
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))
Circuit complexity, proof complexity, and polynomial identity testing
We introduce a new algebraic proof system, which has tight connections to
(algebraic) circuit complexity. In particular, we show that any
super-polynomial lower bound on any Boolean tautology in our proof system
implies that the permanent does not have polynomial-size algebraic circuits
(VNP is not equal to VP). As a corollary to the proof, we also show that
super-polynomial lower bounds on the number of lines in Polynomial Calculus
proofs (as opposed to the usual measure of number of monomials) imply the
Permanent versus Determinant Conjecture. Note that, prior to our work, there
was no proof system for which lower bounds on an arbitrary tautology implied
any computational lower bound.
Our proof system helps clarify the relationships between previous algebraic
proof systems, and begins to shed light on why proof complexity lower bounds
for various proof systems have been so much harder than lower bounds on the
corresponding circuit classes. In doing so, we highlight the importance of
polynomial identity testing (PIT) for understanding proof complexity.
More specifically, we introduce certain propositional axioms satisfied by any
Boolean circuit computing PIT. We use these PIT axioms to shed light on
AC^0[p]-Frege lower bounds, which have been open for nearly 30 years, with no
satisfactory explanation as to their apparent difficulty. We show that either:
a) Proving super-polynomial lower bounds on AC^0[p]-Frege implies VNP does not
have polynomial-size circuits of depth d - a notoriously open question for d at
least 4 - thus explaining the difficulty of lower bounds on AC^0[p]-Frege, or
b) AC^0[p]-Frege cannot efficiently prove the depth d PIT axioms, and hence we
have a lower bound on AC^0[p]-Frege.
Using the algebraic structure of our proof system, we propose a novel way to
extend techniques from algebraic circuit complexity to prove lower bounds in
proof complexity
Query-to-Communication Lifting for BPP
For any -bit boolean function , we show that the randomized
communication complexity of the composed function , where is an
index gadget, is characterized by the randomized decision tree complexity of
. In particular, this means that many query complexity separations involving
randomized models (e.g., classical vs. quantum) automatically imply analogous
separations in communication complexity.Comment: 21 page
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