We present two results in structural complexity theory concerned with the following interrelated
topics: computation with postselection/restarting, closed timelike curves (CTCs), and
approximate counting. The first result is a new characterization of the lesser known complexity
class BPP_path in terms of more familiar concepts. Precisely, BPP_path is the class of ... more >>>

We show that the basic semidefinite programming relaxation value of any constraint satisfaction problem can be computed in NC; that is, in parallel polylogarithmic time and polynomial work. As a complexity-theoretic consequence we get that MIP1$[k,c,s] \subseteq $ PSPACE provided $s/c \leq (.62-o(1))k/2^k$, resolving a question of Austrin, Håstad, and ... more >>>

Suppose we want to minimize a polynomial $p(x) = p(x_1, \dots, x_n)$, subject to some polynomial constraints $q_1(x), \dots, q_m(x) \geq 0$, using the Sum-of-Squares (SOS) SDP hierarachy. Assume we are in the "explicitly bounded" ("Archimedean") case where the constraints include $x_i^2 \leq 1$ for all $1 \leq i \leq ... more >>>

We show that for any odd $k$ and any instance of the Max-kXOR constraint satisfaction problem, there is an efficient algorithm that finds an assignment satisfying at least a $\frac{1}{2} + \Omega(1/\sqrt{D})$ fraction of constraints, where $D$ is a bound on the number of constraints that each variable occurs in. ... more >>>

We consider computation in the presence of closed timelike curves (CTCs), as proposed by Deutsch. We focus on the case in which the CTCs carry classical bits (as opposed to qubits). Previously, Aaronson and Watrous showed that computation with polynomially many CTC bits is equivalent in power to PSPACE. On ... more >>>

We construct pseudorandom generators that fool functions of halfspaces (threshold functions) under a very broad class of product distributions. This class includes not only familiar cases such as the uniform distribution on the discrete cube, the uniform distribution on the solid cube, and the multivariate Gaussian distribution, but also includes ... more >>>

We study lower bounds for Locality Sensitive Hashing (LSH) in the strongest setting: point sets in $\{0,1\}^d$ under the Hamming distance. Recall that $\mathcal{H}$ is said to be an $(r, cr, p, q)$-sensitive hash family if all pairs $x,y \in \{0,1\}^d$ with dist$(x,y) \leq r$ have probability at least $p$ ... more >>>

This article accompanies a tutorial talk given at the 40th ACM STOC conference. In it, we give a brief introduction to Fourier analysis of boolean functions and then discuss some applications: Arrow?s Theorem and other ideas from the theory of Social Choice; the Bonami-Beckner Inequality as an extension of Chernoff/Hoeffding ... more >>>

This paper addresses the problem of testing whether a Boolean-valued function f is a halfspace, i.e. a function of the form f(x)=sgn(w ⋅ x - θ). We consider halfspaces over the continuous domain R^n (endowed with the standard multivariate Gaussian distribution) as well as halfspaces over the Boolean cube {-1,1}^n ... more >>>

Motivated by the study of Parallel Repetition and also by the Unique
Games Conjecture, we investigate the value of the ``Odd Cycle Games''
under parallel repetition. Using tools from discrete harmonic
analysis, we show that after $d$ rounds on the cycle of length $m$,
the value of the game is ... more >>>

In this paper we show a reduction from the Unique Games problem to the problem of approximating MAX-CUT to within a factor of $\GW + \eps$, for all $\eps > 0$; here $\GW \approx .878567$ denotes the approximation ratio achieved by the Goemans-Williamson algorithm~\cite{GW95}. This implies that if the Unique ... more >>>