A syntactic read-k times branching program has the restriction
that no variable occurs more than k times on any path (whether or not
consistent). We exhibit an explicit Boolean function f which cannot
be computed by nondeterministic syntactic read-k times branching programs
of size less than exp(\sqrt{n}}k^{-2k}), ... more >>>

Almost the same types of restricted branching programs (or
binary decision diagrams BDDs) are considered in complexity
theory and in applications like hardware verification. These
models are read-once branching programs (free BDDs) and certain
types of oblivious branching programs (ordered and indexed BDDs
with k layers). The complexity of the ... more >>>

In unrestricted branching programs all variables may be tested
arbitrarily often on each path. But exponential lower bounds are only
known, if on each path the number of tests of each variable is bounded
(Borodin, Razborov and Smolensky (1993)). We examine branching programs
in which for each path the ... more >>>

We examine the power of Boolean functions with low L_1 norms in several
settings. In large part of the recent literature, the degree of a polynomial
which represents a Boolean function in some way was chosen to be the measure of the complexity of the Boolean function.
However, some functions ... more >>>

The main result of this paper is a Omega(n^{1/4}) lower bound
on the size of a sigmoidal circuit computing a specific AC^0_2 function.
This is the first lower bound for the computation model of sigmoidal
circuits with unbounded weights. We also give upper and lower bounds for
the ... more >>>

We define the notion of a randomized branching program in
the natural way similar to the definition of a randomized
circuit. We exhibit an explicit function $f_{n}$ for which
we prove that:
1) $f_{n}$ can be computed by polynomial size randomized
read-once ... more >>>

We extend the lower bounds on the depth of algebraic decision trees
to the case of {\em randomized} algebraic decision trees (with
two-sided error) for languages being finite unions of hyperplanes
and the intersections of halfspaces, solving a long standing open
problem. As an application, among ... more >>>

We prove a general combinatorial lower bound on the
size of monotone circuits. The argument is different from
Razborov's method of approximation, and is based on Sipser's
notion of `finite limit' and Haken's `counting bottlenecks' idea.
We then apply this criterion to the ... more >>>

The computational power of formal models for
networks of spiking neurons is compared with
that of other neural network models based on
McCulloch Pitts neurons (i.e. threshold gates)
respectively sigmoidal gates. In particular it
is shown that networks of spiking neurons are
computationally ... more >>>

Branching programs (b.p.'s) or decision diagrams are a general
graph-based model of sequential computation. The b.p.'s of
polynomial size are a nonuniform counterpart of LOG. Lower bounds
for different kinds of restricted b.p.'s are intensively
investigated. An important restriction are so called $k$-b.p.'s,
where each computation reads each input ... more >>>

The fundamental assumption in the classical theory of
dissemination of information in interconnection networks
(gossiping and broadcasting) is that atomic pieces of information
are communicated. We show that, under suitable assumptions about
the way processors may communicate, computing an n-ary function
that has a "critical input" (e.g., ... more >>>

In a semantic resolution proof we operate with clauses only
but allow {\em arbitrary} rules of inference:

C_1 C_2 ... C_m
__________________
C

Consistency is the only requirement. We prove a very simple
exponential lower bound for the size of bounded fanin semantic
... more >>>

We introduce a notion of a "real game"
(a generalization of the Karchmer - Wigderson game),
and "real communication complexity",
and relate them to the size of monotone real formulas
and circuits. We give an exponential lower bound
for tree-like monotone protocols of small real
communication complexity solving ... more >>>

In this paper, we are concerned with randomized OBDDs and randomized
read-k-times branching programs. We present an example of a Boolean
function which has polynomial size randomized OBDDs with small,
one-sided error, but only non-deterministic read-once branching
programs of exponential size. Furthermore, we discuss a lower bound
technique for randomized ... more >>>

We consider the problem of estimating the average of a huge set of values.
That is,
given oracle access to an arbitrary function $f:\{0,1\}^n\mapsto[0,1]$,
we need to estimate $2^{-n} \sum_{x\in\{0,1\}^n} f(x)$
upto an additive error of $\epsilon$.
We are allowed to employ a randomized algorithm which may err ... more >>>

Randomized branching programs are a probabilistic model of computation
defined in analogy to the well-known probabilistic Turing machines.
In this paper, we present complexity theoretic results for randomized
read-once branching programs.
Our main result shows that nondeterminism can be more powerful than
randomness for read-once branching programs. We present a ... more >>>

Razborov~\cite{Razborov96} recently proved that polynomial
calculus proofs of the pigeonhole principle $PHP_n^m$ must have
degree at least $\ceiling{n/2}+1$ over any field. We present a
simplified proof of the same result. The main
idea of our proof is the same as in the original proof
of Razborov: we want to describe ... more >>>

We consider the conjecture stating that a matrix with rank
$o(n)$ and ones on the main diagonal must contain nonzero
entries on a $2\times 2$ submatrix with one entry on the main
diagonal. We show that a slightly stronger conjecture implies
that ... more >>>

Branching programs (b.p.s) or binary decision diagrams are a
general graph-based model of sequential computation. The b.p.s of
polynomial size are a nonuniform counterpart of LOG. Lower bounds
for different kinds of restricted b.p.s are intensively
investigated. The restrictions based on the number of tests of
more >>>

We obtain an exponential separation between consecutive
levels in the hierarchy of classes of functions computable by
polynomial-size syntactic read-$k$-times branching programs, for
{\em all\/} $k>0$, as conjectured by various
authors~\cite{weg87,ss93,pon95b}. For every $k$, we exhibit two
explicit functions that can be computed by linear-sized
read-$(\kpluso)$-times branching programs but ... more >>>

We introduce a model of a {\em randomized branching program}
in a natural way similar to the definition of a randomized circuit.
We exhibit an explicit boolean function
$f_{n}:\{0,1\}^{n}\to\{0,1\}$ for which we prove that:

1) $f_{n}$ can be computed by a polynomial size randomized
ordered read-once ... more >>>

We prove an exponential lower bound ($2^{\Omega(n/\log n)}$) on the
size of any randomized ordered read-once branching program
computing integer multiplication. Our proof depends on proving
a new lower bound on Yao's randomized one-way communication
complexity of certain boolean functions. It generalizes to some
other ... more >>>

We extend the tools for proving lower bounds for randomized branching
programs by presenting a new technique for the read-once case which is
applicable to a large class of functions. This technique fills the gap
between simple methods only applicable for OBDDs and the well-known
"rectangle technique" of Borodin, Razborov ... more >>>

We obtain improved lower bounds for a class of static and dynamic
data structure problems that includes several problems of searching
sorted lists as special cases.

These lower bounds nearly match the upper bounds given by recent
striking improvements in searching algorithms given by Fredman and
Willard's fusion ... more >>>

We propose an information-theoretic approach to proving
lower bounds on the size of branching programs (b.p.). The argument
is based on Kraft-McMillan type inequalities for the average amount of
uncertainty about (or entropy of) a given input during various
stages of the computation.

We ... more >>>

We survey some upper and lower bounds established recently on
the sizes of randomized branching programs computing explicit
boolean functions. In particular, we display boolean
functions on which randomized read-once ordered branching
programs are exponentially more powerful than deterministic
or nondeterministic read-$k$-times branching programs for ... more >>>

We consider a general model of monotone circuits, which
we call d-local. In these circuits we allow as gates:
(i) arbitrary monotone Boolean functions whose minterms or
maxterms (or both) have length at most <i>d</i>, and
(ii) arbitrary real-valued non-decreasing functions on ... more >>>

For (1,+k)-branching programs and read-k-times branching
programs syntactic and nonsyntactic variants can be distinguished. The
nonsyntactic variants correspond in a natural way to sequential
computations with restrictions on reading the input while lower bound
proofs are easier or only known for the syntactic variants. In this
paper it is shown ... more >>>

The superposition (or composition) problem is a problem of
representation of a function $f$ by a superposition of "simpler" (in a
different meanings) set $\Omega$ of functions. In terms of circuits
theory this means a possibility of computing $f$ by a finite circuit
with 1 fan-out gates $\Omega$ of functions.

We obtain the first non-trivial time-space tradeoff lower bound for
functions f:{0,1}^n ->{0,1} on general branching programs by exhibiting a
Boolean function f that requires exponential size to be computed by any
branching program of length cn, for some constant c>1. We also give the first
separation result between the ... more >>>

Linear Transformed Ordered Binary Decision Diagrams (LTOBDDs) have
been suggested as a generalization of OBDDs for the representation and
manipulation of Boolean functions. Instead of variables as in the
case of OBDDs parities of variables may be tested at the nodes of an
LTOBDD. By this extension it is possible ... more >>>

We survey some of the recent results on the complexity of recognizing
n-dimensional linear arrangements and convex polyhedra by randomized
algebraic decision trees. We give also a number of concrete applications
of these results. In particular, we derive first nontrivial, in fact
quadratic, randomized ... more >>>

A regular $(1,+k)$-branching program ($(1,+k)$-ReBP) is an
ordinary branching program with the following restrictions: (i)
along every consistent path at most $k$ variables are tested more
than once, (ii) for each node $v$ on all paths from the source to
$v$ the same set $X(v)\subseteq X$ of variables is tested, ... more >>>

Ordered binary decision diagrams (OBDDs) are nowadays the
most common dynamic data structure or representation type
for Boolean functions. Among the many areas of application
are verification, model checking, and computer aided design.
For many functions it is easy to estimate the OBDD ... more >>>

We consider the problem of scheduling permanent jobs on related machines
in an on-line fashion. We design a new algorithm that achieves the
competitive ratio of $3+\sqrt{8}\approx 5.828$ for the deterministic
version, and $3.31/\ln 2.155 \approx 4.311$ for its randomized variant,
improving the previous competitive ratios ... more >>>

We prove the first time-space lower bound tradeoffs for randomized
computation of decision problems. The bounds hold even in the
case that the computation is allowed to have arbitrary probability
of error on a small fraction of inputs. Our techniques are an
extension of those used by Ajtai in his ... more >>>

We prove super-linear lower bounds for the number of edges
in constant depth circuits with $n$ inputs and up to $n$ outputs.
Our lower bounds are proved for all types of constant depth
circuits, e.g., constant depth arithmetic circuits, constant depth
threshold circuits ... more >>>

A simple extension of standard neural network models is introduced that
provides a model for neural computations that involve both firing rates and
firing correlations. Such extension appears to be useful since it has been
shown that firing correlations play a significant computational role in
many biological neural systems. Standard ... more >>>

In this paper the computational power of a new type of gate is studied:
winner-take-all gates. This work is motivated by the fact that the cost
of implementing a winner-take-all gate in analog VLSI is about the same
as that of implementing a threshold gate.

We show that winner-take-all ... more >>>

We show that the k-CSP problem over a finite Abelian group G
cannot be approximated within |G|^{k-O(sqrt{k})}-epsilon, for
any constant epsilon>0, unless P=NP. This lower bound matches
well with the best known upper bound, |G|^{k-1}, of Serna,
Trevisan and Xhafa. The proof uses a combination of PCP
techniques---most notably a ... more >>>

One of the great challenges of complexity theory is the problem of
analyzing the dependence of the complexity of Boolean functions on the
resources nondeterminism and randomness. So far, this problem could be
solved only for very few models of computation. For so-called
partitioned binary decision diagrams, which are a ... more >>>

This paper deals with the number of monochromatic combinatorial
rectangles required to approximate a Boolean function on a constant
fraction of all inputs, where each rectangle may be defined with
respect to its own partition of the input variables. The main result
of the paper is that the number of ... more >>>

The general asymmetric (and metric) TSP is known to be approximable
only to within an O(log n) factor, and is also known to be
approximable within a constant factor as soon as the metric is
bounded. In this paper we study the asymmetric and symmetric TSP
problems with bounded metrics ... more >>>

We give a polynomial time approximation scheme (PTAS) for dense
instances of the NEAREST CODEWORD problem.

We consider the following optimization problem:
given a system of m linear equations in n variables over a certain field,
a feasible solution is any assignment of values to the variables, and the
minimized objective function is the number of equations that are not
satisfied. For ... more >>>

We consider bounded occurrence (degree) instances of a minimum
constraint satisfaction problem MIN-LIN2 and a MIN-BISECTION problem for
graphs. MIN-LIN2 is an optimization problem for a given system of linear
equations mod 2 to construct a solution that satisfies the minimum number
of them. E3-OCC-MIN-E3-LIN2 is ... more >>>

It is known that large fragments of the class of dense
Minimum Constraint Satisfaction (MIN-CSP) problems do not have
polynomial time approximation schemes (PTASs) contrary to their
Maximum Constraint Satisfaction analogs. In this paper we prove,
somewhat surprisingly, that the minimum satisfaction of dense
instances of kSAT-formulas, and ... more >>>

We propose an information-theoretic approach to proving lower
bounds on the size of branching programs. The argument is based on
Kraft-McMillan type inequalities for the average amount of
uncertainty about (or entropy of) a given input during the various
stages of computation. The uncertainty is measured by the average
more >>>

We extend the lower bound techniques of [Fortnow], to the
unbounded-error probabilistic model. A key step in the argument
is a generalization of Nepomnjascii's theorem from the Boolean
setting to the arithmetic setting. This generalization is made
possible, due to the recent discovery of logspace-uniform TC^0
more >>>

We present some of the recent results on computational complexity
of approximating bounded degree combinatorial optimization problems. In
particular, we present the best up to now known explicit nonapproximability
bounds on the very small degree optimization problems which are of
particular importance on the intermediate stages ... more >>>

We show that recognizing the $K_3$-freeness and $K_4$-freeness of
graphs is hard, respectively, for two-player nondeterministic
communication protocols with exponentially many partitions and for
nondeterministic (syntactic) read-$s$ times branching programs.

The key ingradient is a generalization of a coloring lemma, due to
Papadimitriou and Sipser, which says that for every ... more >>>

This paper studies the existence of efficient (small size)
amplifiers for proving explicit inaproximability results for bounded degree
and bounded occurrence combinatorial optimization problems, and gives
an explicit construction for such amplifiers. We use this construction
also later to improve the currently best known approximation lower bounds
more >>>

We prove lower bounds on the number of product gates in bilinear
and quadratic circuits that
compute the product of two $n \times n$ matrices over finite fields.
In particular we obtain the following results:

1. We show that the number of product gates in any bilinear
(or quadratic) ... more >>>

We study k-partition communication protocols, an extension
of the standard two-party best-partition model to k input partitions.
The main results are as follows.

1. A strong explicit hierarchy on the degree of
non-obliviousness is established by proving that,
using k+1 partitions instead of k may decrease
the communication complexity from ... more >>>

Representations of boolean functions as polynomials (over rings) have
been used to establish lower bounds in complexity theory. Such
representations were used to great effect by Smolensky, who
established that MOD q \notin AC^0[MOD p] (for distinct primes p, q)
by representing AC^0[MOD p] functions as low-degree multilinear
polynomials over ... more >>>

Branching programs are a well-established computation model
for Boolean functions, especially read-once branching programs
have been studied intensively. Exponential lower bounds for
deterministic and nondeterministic read-once branching programs
are known for a long time. On the other hand, the problem of
proving superpolynomial lower bounds for ... more >>>

The boolean circuit complexity classes
AC^0 \subseteq AC^0[m] \subseteq TC^0 \subseteq NC^1 have been studied
intensely. Other than NC^1, they are defined by constant-depth
circuits of polynomial size and unbounded fan-in over some set of
allowed gates. One reason for interest in these classes is that they
contain the ... more >>>

We present a new efficient sampling method for approximating
r-dimensional Maximum Constraint Satisfaction Problems, MAX-rCSP, on
n variables up to an additive error \epsilon n^r.We prove a new
general paradigm in that it suffices, for a given set of constraints,
to pick a small uniformly random ... more >>>

We present a new lower bound technique for two types of restricted
Branching Programs (BPs), namely for read-once BPs (BP1s) with
restricted amount of nondeterminism and for (1,+k)-BPs. For this
technique, we introduce the notion of (strictly) k-wise l-mixed
Boolean functions, which generalizes the concept of l-mixedness ... more >>>

We prove a lower bound of $\Omega(m^2 \log m)$ for the size of
any arithmetic circuit for the product of two matrices,
over the real or complex numbers, as long as the circuit doesn't
use products with field elements of absolute value larger than 1
(where $m \times m$ is ... more >>>

We prove upper and lower bounds on the power of quantum and stochastic
branching programs of bounded width. We show any NC^1 language can
be accepted exactly by a width-2 quantum branching program of
polynomial length, in contrast to the classical case where width 5 is
necessary unless \NC^1=\ACC. ... more >>>

Branching programs are a well-established computation
model for boolean functions, especially read-once
branching programs (BP1s) have been studied intensively.
A very simple function $f$ in $n^2$ variables is
exhibited such that both the function $f$ and its negation
$\neg f$ can be computed by $\Sigma^3_p$-circuits,
the ... more >>>

We prove exponential lower bounds on the length of 2-query
locally decodable codes. Goldreich et al. recently proved such bounds
for the special case of linear locally decodable codes.
Our proof shows that a 2-query locally decodable code can be decoded
with only 1 quantum query, and then ... more >>>

We consider the problem of testing bipartiteness in the adjacency
matrix model. The best known algorithm, due to Alon and Krivelevich,
distinguishes between bipartite graphs and graphs that are
$\epsilon$-far from bipartite using $O((1/\epsilon^2)polylog(1/epsilon)$
queries. We show that this is optimal for non-adaptive algorithms,
up to the ... more >>>

We revisit the oft-neglected 'recursive Fourier sampling' (RFS) problem, introduced by Bernstein and Vazirani to prove an oracle separation between BPP and BQP. We show that the known quantum algorithm for RFS is essentially optimal, despite its seemingly wasteful need to uncompute information. This implies that, to place BQP outside ... more >>>

We improve a number of approximation lower bounds for
bounded occurrence optimization problems like MAX-2SAT,
E2-LIN-2, Maximum Independent Set and Maximum-3D-Matching.

We study approximation hardness and satisfiability of bounded
occurrence uniform instances of SAT. Among other things, we prove
the inapproximability for SAT instances in which every clause has
exactly 3 literals and each variable occurs exactly 4 times,
and display an explicit ... more >>>

We present a novel technique, based on the Jensen-Shannon divergence
from information theory, to prove lower bounds on the query complexity
of sampling algorithms that approximate functions over arbitrary
domain and range. Unlike previous methods, our technique does not
use a reduction from a binary decision problem, but rather ... more >>>

A source is compressible if we can efficiently compute short
descriptions of strings in the support and efficiently
recover the strings from the descriptions. In this paper, we
present a technique for proving lower bounds on
compressibility in an oracle setting, which yields the
following results:

- We ... more >>>

An arithmetic formula is multi-linear if the polynomial computed
by each of its sub-formulas is multi-linear. We prove that any
multi-linear arithmetic formula for the permanent or the
determinant of an $n \times n$ matrix is of size super-polynomial
in $n$.

We prove the first lower bound for restricted read-once parity branching
programs with unlimited parity nondeterminism where for each input the
variables may be tested according to several orderings.

Proving a superpolynomial lower bound for read-once parity branching
programs is still a challenging open problem. The following variant of ... more >>>

We consider the approximate nearest neighbour search problem on the
Hamming Cube $\b^d$. We show that a randomised cell probe algorithm that
uses polynomial storage and word size $d^{O(1)}$ requires a worst case
query time of $\Omega(\log\log d/\log\log\log d)$. The approximation
factor may be as loose as $2^{\log^{1-\eta}d}$ for any ... more >>>

We show that any 1-round 2-server Private Information
Retrieval Protocol where the answers are 1-bit long must ask questions
that are at least $n-2$ bits long, which is nearly equal to the known
$n-1$ upper bound. This improves upon the approximately $0.25n$ lower
bound of Kerenidis and de Wolf while ... more >>>

Let $\tau(k)$ be the minimum number of arithmetic operations
required to build the integer $k \in \N$ from the constant 1.
A sequence $x_k$ is said to be ``easy to compute'' if
there exists a polynomial $p$ such that $\tau(x_k) \leq p(\log k)$
for all $k \geq ... more >>>

In 1977 Valiant proposed a graph theoretical method for proving lower
bounds on algebraic circuits with gates computing linear functions.
He used this method to reduce the problem of proving
lower bounds on circuits with linear gates to to proving lower bounds
on the rigidity of a matrix, a ... more >>>

DPLL (for Davis, Putnam, Logemann, and Loveland) algorithms form the largest family of contemporary algorithms for SAT (the propositional satisfiability problem) and are widely used in applications. The recursion trees of DPLL algorithm executions on unsatisfiable formulas are equivalent to tree-like resolution proofs. Therefore, lower bounds for tree-like resolution (which ... more >>>

An arithmetic circuit or formula is multilinear if the polynomial
computed at each of its wires is multilinear.
We give an explicit example for a polynomial $f(x_1,...,x_n)$,
with coefficients in $\{0,1\}$, such that over any field:
1) $f$ can be computed by a polynomial-size multilinear circuit
of depth $O(\log^2 ... more >>>

A large body of work studies the complexity of selecting the
$j$-th largest element in an arbitrary set of $n$ elements (a.k.a.
the select$(j)$ operation). In this work, we study the
complexity of select in data that is partially structured by
an initial preprocessing stage and in a data structure ... more >>>

We consider the minimal number of AND and OR gates in monotone
circuits for quadratic boolean functions, i.e. disjunctions of
length-$2$ monomials. The single level conjecture claims that
monotone single level circuits, i.e. circuits which have only one
level of AND gates, for quadratic functions are ... more >>>

Consider a homogeneous polynomial $p(z_1,...,z_n)$ of degree $n$ in $n$ complex variables .
Assume that this polynomial satisfies the property : \\

$|p(z_1,...,z_n)| \geq \prod_{1 \leq i \leq n} Re(z_i)$ on the domain $\{(z_1,...,z_n) : Re(z_i) \geq 0 , 1 \leq i \leq n \}$ . \\

We prove that ... more >>>

In this paper we propose the study of a new model of restricted
branching programs which we call incremental branching programs.
This is in line with the program proposed by Cook in 1974 as an
approach for separating the class of problems solvable in logarithmic
space from problems solvable in ... more >>>

We construct an explicit polynomial $f(x_1,...,x_n)$, with
coefficients in ${0,1}$, such that the size of any syntactically
multilinear arithmetic circuit computing $f$ is at least
$\Omega( n^{4/3} / log^2(n) )$. The lower bound holds over any field.

How much can randomness help computation? Motivated by this general question and by volume computation, one of the few instances where randomness provably helps, we analyze a notion of dispersion and connect it to asymptotic convex geometry. We obtain a nearly quadratic lower bound on the complexity of randomized volume ... more >>>

We demonstrate a family of propositional formulas in conjunctive normal form
so that a formula of size $N$ requires size $2^{\Omega(\sqrt[7]{N/logN})}$
to refute using the tree-like OBDD refutation system of
Atserias, Kolaitis and Vardi
with respect to all variable orderings.
All known symbolic quantifier elimination algorithms for satisfiability
generate ... more >>>

We prove the first time-space tradeoffs for counting the number of solutions to an NP problem modulo small integers, and also improve upon the known time-space tradeoffs for Sat. Let m be a positive integer, and define MODm-Sat to be the problem of determining if a given Boolean formula has ... more >>>

We study the round complexity of various cryptographic protocols. Our main result is a tight lower bound on the round complexity of any fully-black-box construction of a statistically-hiding commitment scheme from one-way permutations, and even from trapdoor permutations. This lower bound matches the round complexity of the statistically-hiding commitment scheme ... more >>>

Ordered binary decision diagrams (OBDDs) are nowadays the most common
dynamic data structure or representation type for Boolean functions.
Among the many areas of application are verification, model checking,
computer aided design, relational algebra, and symbolic graph algorithms.
Although many even exponential lower bounds on the OBDD size of Boolean ... more >>>

We describe a general method for testing whether a function on n input variables has a concise representation. The approach combines ideas from the junta test of Fischer et al. with ideas from learning theory, and yields property testers that make poly(s/epsilon) queries (independent of n) for Boolean function classes ... more >>>

We study multilinear formulas, monotone arithmetic circuits, maximal-partition discrepancy, best-partition communication complexity and extractors constructions. We start by proving lower bounds for an explicit polynomial for the following three subclasses of syntactically multilinear arithmetic formulas over the field C and the set of variables {x1,...,xn}:

1. Noise-resistant. A syntactically multilinear ... more >>>

Linearity tests are randomized algorithms which have oracle access to the truth table of some function $f$,
which are supposed to distinguish between linear functions and functions which are far from linear. Linearity tests were first introduced by Blum, Luby and Rubenfeld in \cite{BLR93}, and were later used in the ... more >>>

Ever since the fundamental work of Cook from 1971, satisfiability has been recognized as a central problem in computational complexity. It is widely believed to be intractable, and yet till recently even a linear-time, logarithmic-space algorithm for satisfiability was not ruled out. In 1997 Fortnow, building on earlier work by ... more >>>

Branching programs are computation models
measuring the space of (Turing machine) computations.
Read-once branching programs (BP1s) are the
most general model where each graph-theoretical path is the computation
path for some input. Exponential lower bounds on the size of read-once
branching programs are known since a long time. Nevertheless, there ... more >>>

In this paper we show that lower bounds for bounded depth arithmetic circuits imply derandomization of polynomial identity testing for bounded depth arithmetic circuits. More formally, if there exists an explicit polynomial f(x_1,...,x_m) that cannot be computed by a depth d arithmetic circuit of small size then there exists an ... more >>>

In this paper we give the first deterministic polynomial time algorithm for testing whether a {\em diagonal} depth-$3$ circuit $C(\arg{x}{n})$ (i.e. $C$ is a sum of powers of linear functions) is zero. We also prove an exponential lower bound showing that such a circuit will compute determinant or permanent only ... more >>>

A basic fact in linear algebra is that the image of the curve
$f(x)=(x^1,x^2,x^3,...,x^m)$, say over $C$, is not contained in any
$m-1$ dimensional affine subspace of $C^m$. In other words, the image
of $f$ is not contained in the image of any polynomial-mapping
$G:C^{m-1} ---> C^m$ ... more >>>

We prove an exponential lower bound for the size of constant depth multilinear arithmetic circuits computing either the determinant or the permanent (a circuit is called multilinear, if the polynomial computed by each of its gates is multilinear). We also prove a super-polynomial separation between the size of product-depth $d$ ... more >>>

Recently, an extension of the standard data stream model has been introduced in which an algorithm can create and manipulate multiple read/write streams in addition to its input data stream. Like the data stream model, the most important parameter for this model is the amount of internal memory used by ... more >>>

We observe that many important computational problems in NC^1 share a simple self-reducibility property. We then show that, for any problem A having this self-reducibility property, A has polynomial size TC^0 circuits if and only if it has TC^0 circuits of size n^{1+\epsilon} for every \epsilon > 0 (counting the ... more >>>

Integer multiplication as one of the basic arithmetic functions has been
in the focus of several complexity theoretical investigations.
Ordered binary decision diagrams (OBDDs) are one of the most common
dynamic data structures for boolean functions.
Among the many areas of application are verification, model checking,
computer-aided design, relational algebra, ... more >>>

Representations of Boolean functions by real polynomials
play an important role in complexity theory. Typically,
one is interested in the least degree of a polynomial
p(x_1,...,x_n) that approximates or sign-represents
a given Boolean function f(x_1,...,x_n). This article
surveys a new and growing body of work in communication
complexity that centers ... more >>>

We prove n^Omega(1) lower bounds on the multiparty communication complexity of AC^0 functions in the number-on-forehead (NOF) model for up to Theta(log n) players. These are the first lower bounds for any AC^0 function for omega(loglog n) players. In particular we show that there are families of depth 3 read-once ... more >>>

We show that proving exponential lower bounds on depth four arithmetic
circuits imply exponential lower bounds for unrestricted depth arithmetic
circuits. In other words, for exponential sized circuits additional depth
beyond four does not help.

We then show that a complete black-box derandomization of Identity Testing problem for depth four ... more >>>

We prove an n^{Omega(1)}/2^{O(k)} lower bound on the randomized k-party communication complexity of read-once depth 4 AC^0 functions in the number-on-forehead (NOF) model for O(log n) players. These are the first non-trivial lower bounds for general NOF multiparty communication complexity for any AC^0 function for omega(log log n) players. For ... more >>>

It has been known since [Zyablov and Pinsker 1982] that a random $q$-ary code of rate $1-H_q(\rho)-\eps$ (where $0<\rho<1-1/q$, $\eps>0$ and $H_q(\cdot)$ is the $q$-ary entropy function) with high probability is a $(\rho,1/\eps)$-list decodable code. (That is, every Hamming ball of radius at most $\rho n$ has at most $1/\eps$ ... more >>>

The Gap-Hamming-Distance problem arose in the context of proving space
lower bounds for a number of key problems in the data stream model. In
this problem, Alice and Bob have to decide whether the Hamming distance
between their $n$-bit input strings is large (i.e., at least $n/2 +
\sqrt n$) ... more >>>

Khrapchenko's classical lower bound $n^2$ on the formula size of the
parity function~$f$ can be interpreted as designing a suitable
measure of subrectangles of the combinatorial rectangle
$f^{-1}(0)\times f^{-1}(1)$. Trying to generalize this approach we
arrived at the concept of \emph{convex measures}. We prove the
... more >>>

Given a directed graph $G = (V,E)$ and an integer $k \geq 1$, a $k$-transitive-closure-spanner ($k$-TC-spanner) of $G$ is a directed graph $H = (V, E_H)$ that has (1) the same transitive-closure as $G$ and (2) diameter at most $k$. Transitive-closure spanners were introduced in \cite{tc-spanners-soda} as a common abstraction ... more >>>

We show several unconditional lower bounds for exponential time classes
against polynomial time classes with advice, including:
\begin{enumerate}
\item For any constant $c$, $\NEXP \not \subseteq \P^{\NP[n^c]}/n^c$
\item For any constant $c$, $\MAEXP \not \subseteq \MA/n^c$
\item $\BPEXP \not \subseteq \BPP/n^{o(1)}$
\end{enumerate}

It was previously unknown even whether $\NEXP \subseteq ... more >>>

The motivation for this paper is to study the complexity of constant-width arithmetic circuits. Our main results are the following.
1. For every k > 1, we provide an explicit polynomial that can be computed by a linear-sized monotone circuit of width 2k but has no subexponential-sized monotone circuit ... more >>>

Polynomial identity testing (PIT) is the problem of checking whether a given
arithmetic circuit is the zero circuit. PIT ranks as one of the most important
open problems in the intersection of algebra and computational complexity. In the last
few years, there has been an impressive progress on this ... more >>>

The rigidity of a matrix A for target rank r is the minimum number of entries
of A that must be changed to ensure that the rank of the altered matrix is at
most r. Since its introduction by Valiant (1977), rigidity and similar
rank-robustness functions of matrices have found ... more >>>

Locally testable codes (LTCs) are error-correcting codes for which membership, in the code, of a given word can be tested by examining it in very few locations. Most known constructions of locally testable codes are linear codes, and give error-correcting codes
whose duals have (superlinearly) {\em many} small weight ... more >>>

This paper makes three main contributions to the theory of communication complexity and stream computation. First, we present new bounds on the information complexity of AUGMENTED-INDEX. In contrast to analogous results for INDEX by Jain, Radhakrishnan and Sen [J. ACM, 2009], we have to overcome the significant technical challenge that ... more >>>

We study possible formulations of algebraic propositional proof systems operating with noncommutative formulas. We observe that a simple formulation gives rise to systems at least as strong as Frege--yielding a semantic way to define a Cook-Reckhow (i.e., polynomially verifiable) algebraic analogue of Frege proofs, different from that given in Buss ... more >>>

We introduce a new quantum adversary method to prove lower bounds on the query complexity of the quantum state generation problem. This problem encompasses both, the computation of partial or total functions and the preparation of target quantum states. There has been hope for quite some time that quantum state ... more >>>

A general framework for parameterized proof complexity was introduced by Dantchev, Martin, and Szeider (FOCS'07). In that framework the parameterized version of any proof system is not fpt-bounded for some technical reasons, but we remark that this question becomes much more interesting if we restrict ourselves to those parameterized contradictions ... more >>>

The results of Strassen and Raz show that good enough tensor rank lower bounds have implications for algebraic circuit/formula lower bounds.

We explore tensor rank lower and upper bounds, focusing on explicit tensors. For odd d, we construct field-independent explicit 0/1 tensors T:[n]^d->F with rank at least 2n^(floor(d/2))+n-Theta(d log n). ... more >>>

A Boolean function $f \colon \mathbb{F}^n_2 \rightarrow \mathbb{F}_2$ is called an affine disperser for sources of dimension $d$, if $f$ is not constant on any affine subspace of $\mathbb{F}^n_2$ of dimension at least $d$. Recently Ben-Sasson and Kopparty gave an explicit construction of an affine disperser for $d=o(n)$. The main ... more >>>

Locally decodable codes
are error correcting codes with the extra property that, in order
to retrieve the correct value of just one position of the input with
high probability, it is
sufficient to read a small number of
positions of the corresponding,
possibly corrupted ... more >>>

This paper characterizes alternation trading based proofs that satisfiability is not in the time and space bounded class $\DTISP(n^c, n^\epsilon)$, for various values $c<2$ and $\epsilon<1$. We characterize exactly what can be proved in the $\epsilon=0$ case with currently known methods, and prove the conjecture of Williams that $c=2\cos(\pi/7)$ is ... more >>>

We study the communication complexity of evaluating functions when the input data is randomly allocated (according to some known distribution) amongst two or more players, possibly with information overlap. This naturally extends previously studied variable partition models such as the best-case and worst-case partition models. We aim to understand whether ... more >>>

In this paper we present a combinatorial approach for proving complexity lower bounds. We mainly focus on the following instantiation of it. Consider a pair of properties of $m$-edge regular hypergraphs. Suppose they are ``indistinguishable'' with respect to hypergraphs with $m-t$ edges, in the sense that every such hypergraph has ... more >>>