10 research outputs found
A PSPACE Construction of a Hitting Set for the Closure of Small Algebraic Circuits
In this paper we study the complexity of constructing a hitting set for the
closure of VP, the class of polynomials that can be infinitesimally
approximated by polynomials that are computed by polynomial sized algebraic
circuits, over the real or complex numbers. Specifically, we show that there is
a PSPACE algorithm that given n,s,r in unary outputs a set of n-tuples over the
rationals of size poly(n,s,r), with poly(n,s,r) bit complexity, that hits all
n-variate polynomials of degree-r that are the limit of size-s algebraic
circuits. Previously it was known that a random set of this size is a hitting
set, but a construction that is certified to work was only known in EXPSPACE
(or EXPH assuming the generalized Riemann hypothesis). As a corollary we get
that a host of other algebraic problems such as Noether Normalization Lemma,
can also be solved in PSPACE deterministically, where earlier only randomized
algorithms and EXPSPACE algorithms (or EXPH assuming the generalized Riemann
hypothesis) were known.
The proof relies on the new notion of a robust hitting set which is a set of
inputs such that any nonzero polynomial that can be computed by a polynomial
size algebraic circuit, evaluates to a not too small value on at least one
element of the set. Proving the existence of such a robust hitting set is the
main technical difficulty in the proof.
Our proof uses anti-concentration results for polynomials, basic tools from
algebraic geometry and the existential theory of the reals