Tensor Reconstruction Beyond Constant Rank

We give reconstruction algorithms for subclasses of depth-3 arithmetic circuits. In particular, we obtain the first efficient algorithm for finding tensor rank, and an optimal tensor decomposition as a sum of rank-one tensors, when given black-box access to a tensor of super-constant rank. Specifically, we obtain the following results: 1) A deterministic algorithm that reconstructs polynomials computed by Σ^{[k]}⋀^{[d]}Σ circuits in time poly(n,d,c) ⋅ poly(k)^{k^{k^{10}}}, 2) A randomized algorithm that reconstructs polynomials computed by multilinear Σ^{[k]}∏^{[d]}Σ circuits in time poly(n,d,c) ⋅ k^{k^{k^{k^{O(k)}}}}, 3) A randomized algorithm that reconstructs polynomials computed by set-multilinear Σ^{[k]}∏^{[d]}Σ circuits in time poly(n,d,c) ⋅ k^{k^{k^{k^{O(k)}}}}, where c = log q if 𝔽 = 𝔽_q is a finite field, and c equals the maximum bit complexity of any coefficient of f if 𝔽 is infinite. Prior to our work, polynomial time algorithms for the case when the rank, k, is constant, were given by Bhargava, Saraf and Volkovich [Vishwas Bhargava et al., 2021]. Another contribution of this work is correcting an error from a paper of Karnin and Shpilka [Zohar Shay Karnin and Amir Shpilka, 2009] (with some loss in parameters) that also affected Theorem 1.6 of [Vishwas Bhargava et al., 2021]. Consequently, the results of [Zohar Shay Karnin and Amir Shpilka, 2009; Vishwas Bhargava et al., 2021] continue to hold, with a slightly worse setting of parameters. For fixing the error we systematically study the relation between syntactic and semantic notions of rank of Σ Π Σ circuits, and the corresponding partitions of such circuits. We obtain our improved running time by introducing a technique for learning rank preserving coordinate-subspaces. Both [Zohar Shay Karnin and Amir Shpilka, 2009] and [Vishwas Bhargava et al., 2021] tried all choices of finding the "correct" coordinates, which, due to the size of the set, led to having a fast growing function of k at the exponent of n. We manage to find these spaces in time that is still growing fast with k, yet it is only a fixed polynomial in n.