5,095 research outputs found
The Hardness of Decision Tree Complexity
No full textLet f be a Boolean function given as either a truth table or a circuit. How difficult is it to find the decision tree complexity, also known as deterministic query complexity, of f in both cases? We prove that this problem is NC¹-hard and PSPACE-hard, respectively. The second bound is tight, and the first bound is close to being tight
Lower Bounds for Semi-adaptive Data Structures via Corruption
No full textIn a dynamic data structure problem we wish to maintain an encoding of some data in memory, in such a way that we may efficiently carry out a sequence of queries and updates to the data. A long-standing open problem in this area is to prove an unconditional polynomial lower bound of a trade-off between the update time and the query time of an adaptive dynamic data structure computing some explicit function. Ko and Weinstein provided such lower bound for a restricted class of semi-adaptive data structures, which compute the Disjointness function. There, the data are subsets x₁,… ,x_k and y of {1,… ,n}, the updates can modify y (by inserting and removing elements), and the queries are an index i ∈ {1,… ,k} (query i should answer whether x_i and y are disjoint, i.e., it should compute the Disjointness function applied to (x_i, y)). The semi-adaptiveness places a restriction in how the data structure can be accessed in order to answer a query. We generalize the lower bound of Ko and Weinstein to work not just for the Disjointness, but for any function having high complexity under the smooth corruption bound
Catalytic Space: Non-determinism and Hierarchy
No full textCatalytic computation, defined by Buhrman, Cleve, Koucký, Loff and Speelman (STOC 2014), is a space-bounded computation where in addition to our working memory we have an exponentially larger auxiliary memory which is full; the auxiliary memory may be used throughout the computation, but it must be restored to its initial content by the end of the computation.
Motivated by the surprising power of this model, we set out to study the non-deterministic version of catalytic computation. We establish that non-deterministic catalytic log-space is contained in ZPP, which is the same bound known for its deterministic counterpart, and we prove that non-deterministic catalytic space is closed under complement (under a standard derandomization assumption). Furthermore, we establish hierarchy theorems for non-deterministic and deterministic catalytic computation
Hardness of Constant-Round Communication Complexity
No full textHow difficult is it to compute the communication complexity of a two-argument total Boolean function f:[N]×[N] → {0,1}, when it is given as an N×N binary matrix? In 2009, Kushilevitz and Weinreb showed that this problem is cryptographically hard, but it is still open whether it is NP-hard.
In this work, we show that it is NP-hard to approximate the size (number of leaves) of the smallest constant-round protocol for a two-argument total Boolean function f:[N]×[N] → {0,1}, when it is given as an N×N binary matrix. Along the way to proving this, we show a new deterministic variant of the round elimination lemma, which may be of independent interest
NP-hardness of circuit minimization for multi-output functions
No full textCan we design efficient algorithms for finding fast algorithms? This question is captured by various circuit minimization problems, and algorithms for the corresponding tasks have significant practical applications. Following the work of Cook and Levin in the early 1970s, a central question is whether minimizing the circuit size of an explicitly given function is NP-complete. While this is known to hold in restricted models such as DNFs, making progress with respect to more expressive classes of circuits has been elusive.
In this work, we establish the first NP-hardness result for circuit minimization of total functions in the setting of general (unrestricted) Boolean circuits. More precisely, we show that computing the minimum circuit size of a given multi-output Boolean function f : {0,1}^n → {0,1}^m is NP-hard under many-one polynomial-time randomized reductions. Our argument builds on a simpler NP-hardness proof for the circuit minimization problem for (single-output) Boolean functions under an extended set of generators.
Complementing these results, we investigate the computational hardness of minimizing communication. We establish that several variants of this problem are NP-hard under deterministic reductions. In particular, unless = , no polynomial-time computable function can approximate the deterministic two-party communication complexity of a partial Boolean function up to a polynomial. This has consequences for the class of structural results that one might hope to show about the communication complexity of partial functions
Lifting Theorems for Equality
No full textWe show a deterministic simulation (or lifting) theorem for composed problems f o Eq_n where the inner function (the gadget) is Equality on n bits. When f is a total function on p bits, it is easy to show via a rank argument that the communication complexity of f o Eq_n is Omega(deg(f) * n). However, there is a surprising counter-example of a partial function f on p bits, such that any completion f' of f has deg(f') = Omega(p), and yet f o Eq_n has communication complexity O(n). Nonetheless, we are able to show that the communication complexity of f o Eq_n is at least D(f) * n for a complexity measure D(f) which is closely related to the AND-query complexity of f and is lower-bounded by the logarithm of the leaf complexity of f. As a corollary, we also obtain lifting theorems for the set-disjointness gadget, and a lifting theorem in the context of parity decision-trees, for the NOR gadget.
As an application, we prove a tight lower-bound for the deterministic communication complexity of the communication problem, where Alice and Bob are each given p-many n-bit strings, with the promise that either all of the strings are distinct, or all-but-one of the strings are distinct, and they wish to know which is the case. We show that the complexity of this problem is Theta(p * n)
Memory Compression with Quantum Random-Access Gates
No full textIn the classical RAM, we have the following useful property. If we have an algorithm that uses M memory cells throughout its execution, and in addition is sparse, in the sense that, at any point in time, only m out of M cells will be non-zero, then we may "compress" it into another algorithm which uses only m log M memory and runs in almost the same time. We may do so by simulating the memory using either a hash table, or a self-balancing tree.
We show an analogous result for quantum algorithms equipped with quantum random-access gates. If we have a quantum algorithm that runs in time T and uses M qubits, such that the state of the memory, at any time step, is supported on computational-basis vectors of Hamming weight at most m, then it can be simulated by another algorithm which uses only O(m log M) memory, and runs in time Õ(T).
We show how this theorem can be used, in a black-box way, to simplify the presentation in several papers. Broadly speaking, when there exists a need for a space-efficient history-independent quantum data-structure, it is often possible to construct a space-inefficient, yet sparse, quantum data structure, and then appeal to our main theorem. This results in simpler and shorter arguments
Polynomial Pass Semi-Streaming Lower Bounds for K-Cores and Degeneracy
No full textThe following question arises naturally in the study of graph streaming algorithms:
Is there any graph problem which is "not too hard", in that it can be solved efficiently with total communication (nearly) linear in the number n of vertices, and for which, nonetheless, any streaming algorithm with Õ(n) space (i.e., a semi-streaming algorithm) needs a polynomial n^Ω(1) number of passes?
Assadi, Chen, and Khanna [STOC 2019] were the first to prove that this is indeed the case. However, the lower bounds that they obtained are for rather non-standard graph problems.
Our first main contribution is to present the first polynomial-pass lower bounds for natural "not too hard" graph problems studied previously in the streaming model: k-cores and degeneracy. We devise a novel communication protocol for both problems with near-linear communication, thus showing that k-cores and degeneracy are natural examples of "not too hard" problems. Indeed, previous work have developed single-pass semi-streaming algorithms for approximating these problems. In contrast, we prove that any semi-streaming algorithm for exactly solving these problems requires (almost) Ω(n^{1/3}) passes.
The lower bound follows by a reduction from a generalization of the hidden pointer chasing (HPC) problem of Assadi, Chen, and Khanna, which is also the basis of their earlier semi-streaming lower bounds.
Our second main contribution is improved round-communication lower bounds for the underlying communication problems at the basis of these reductions:
- We improve the previous lower bound of Assadi, Chen, and Khanna for HPC to achieve optimal bounds for this problem.
- We further observe that all current reductions from HPC can also work with a generalized version of this problem that we call MultiHPC, and prove an even stronger and optimal lower bound for this generalization. These two results collectively allow us to improve the resulting pass lower bounds for semi-streaming algorithms by a polynomial factor, namely, from n^{1/5} to n^{1/3} passes
Introducing “La fabrique du droit”. A Conversation with Bruno Latour
No full textBruno Latour talks with Paolo Landri about his book on the Conseil d'Etat (La Fabrique du droit). The conversation was held in 2006 at the time of the Italian translation of the book and illustrates the research project and the difficulties the author had in the field. At the same time, it clarifies the trajectories of Bruno Latour's work and theoretical framework of his program of study with respect to sociology, anthropology, and philosophy of law. The conversation helps to understand the open-ended character of Bruno Latour's research and reflection including STS as well as sociological, anthropological and philosophical themes
Author Correction: Collection of the digital data from the neurological examination.
No full textIn this article, the corresponding author was inadvertently designated only to “Bruno Kusznir Vitturi” but it should have been “Bruno Kusznir Vitturi” and “Walter Maetzler”. The original article has been corrected
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