In this paper, we introduce a general framework for fine-grained reductions
of approximate counting problems to their decision versions. (Thus we use an
oracle that decides whether any witness exists to multiplicatively approximate
the number of witnesses with minimal overhead.) This mirrors a foundational
result of Sipser (STOC 1983) and Stockmeyer (SICOMP 1985) in the
polynomial-time setting, and a similar result of M\"uller (IWPEC 2006) in the
FPT setting. Using our framework, we obtain such reductions for some of the
most important problems in fine-grained complexity: the Orthogonal Vectors
problem, 3SUM, and the Negative-Weight Triangle problem (which is closely
related to All-Pairs Shortest Path).
We also provide a fine-grained reduction from approximate #SAT to SAT.
Suppose the Strong Exponential Time Hypothesis (SETH) is false, so that for
some 1<c<2 and all k there is an O(cn)-time algorithm for k-SAT. Then we
prove that for all k, there is an O((c+o(1))n)-time algorithm for
approximate #k-SAT. In particular, our result implies that the Exponential
Time Hypothesis (ETH) is equivalent to the seemingly-weaker statement that
there is no algorithm to approximate #3-SAT to within a factor of 1+ϵ
in time 2o(n)/ϵ2 (taking ϵ>0 as part of the input).Comment: An extended abstract was presented at STOC 201