On the Inner Product Predicate and a Generalization of Matching Vector Families

Motivated by cryptographic applications such as predicate encryption, we consider the problem of representing an arbitrary predicate as the inner product predicate on two vectors. Concretely, fix a Boolean function P and some modulus q. We are interested in encoding x to x_vector and y to y_vector so that P(x,y) = 1 = 0 mod q, where the vectors should be as short as possible. This problem can also be viewed as a generalization of matching vector families, which corresponds to the equality predicate. Matching vector families have been used in the constructions of Ramsey graphs, private information retrieval (PIR) protocols, and more recently, secret sharing. Our main result is a simple lower bound that allows us to show that known encodings for many predicates considered in the cryptographic literature such as greater than and threshold are essentially optimal for prime modulus q. Using this approach, we also prove lower bounds on encodings for composite q, and then show tight upper bounds for such predicates as greater than, index and disjointness

Quadratically Tight Relations for Randomized Query Complexity

Let $f:\{0,1\}^n \rightarrow \{0,1\}$ be a Boolean function. The certificate complexity $C(f)$ is a complexity measure that is quadratically tight for the zero-error randomized query complexity $R_0(f)$: $C(f) \leq R_0(f) \leq C(f)^2$. In this paper we study a new complexity measure that we call expectational certificate complexity $EC(f)$, which is also a quadratically tight bound on $R_0(f)$: $EC(f) \leq R_0(f) = O(EC(f)^2)$. We prove that $EC(f) \leq C(f) \leq EC(f)^2$ and show that there is a quadratic separation between the two, thus $EC(f)$ gives a tighter upper bound for $R_0(f)$. The measure is also related to the fractional certificate complexity $FC(f)$ as follows: $FC(f) \leq EC(f) = O(FC(f)^{3/2})$. This also connects to an open question by Aaronson whether $FC(f)$ is a quadratically tight bound for $R_0(f)$, as $EC(f)$ is in fact a relaxation of $FC(f)$. In the second part of the work, we upper bound the distributed query complexity $D^\mu_\epsilon(f)$ for product distributions $\mu$ by the square of the query corruption bound ($\mathrm{corr}_\epsilon(f)$) which improves upon a result of Harsha, Jain and Radhakrishnan [2015]. A similar statement for communication complexity is open.Comment: 14 page

Quantum Algorithms for Some Strings Problems Based on Quantum String Comparator

We study algorithms for solving three problems on strings. These are sorting of n strings of length k, “the Most Frequent String Search Problem”, and “searching intersection of two sequences of strings”. We construct quantum algorithms that are faster than classical (randomized or deterministic) counterparts for each of these problems. The quantum algorithms are based on the quantum procedure for comparing two strings of length k in O(k) queries. The first problem is sorting n strings of length k. We show that classical complexity of the problem is Θ(nk) for constant size alphabet, but our quantum algorithm has O˜(nk) complexity. The second one is searching the most frequent string among n strings of length k. We show that the classical complexity of the problem is Θ(nk), but our quantum algorithm has O˜(nk) complexity. The third problem is searching for an intersection of two sequences of strings. All strings have the same length k. The size of the first set is n, and the size of the second set is m. We show that the classical complexity of the problem is Θ((n+m)k), but our quantum algorithm has O˜((n+m)k) complexity

Exact Affine Counter Automata

We introduce an affine generalization of counter automata, and analyze their ability as well as affine finite automata. Our contributions are as follows. We show that there is a language that can be recognized by exact realtime affine counter automata but by neither 1-way deterministic pushdown automata nor realtime deterministic k-counter automata. We also show that a certain promise problem, which is conjectured not to be solved by two-way quantum finite automata in polynomial time, can be solved by Las Vegas affine finite automata. Lastly, we show that how a counter helps for affine finite automata by showing that the language MANYTWINS, which is conjectured not to be recognized by affine, quantum or classical finite state models in polynomial time, can be recognized by affine counter automata with one-sided bounded-error in realtime