Randomized Communication Complexity for Linear Algebra Problems over Finite Fields

Abstract

Finding the singularity of a matrix is a basic problem in linear algebra. Chu and Schnitger [SC95] first considered this problem in the communication complexity model, in which Alice holds the first half of the matrix and Bob holds the other half. They proved that the deterministic communication complexity is Omega(n^2 log p) for an n by n matrix over the finite field F_p. Then, Clarkson and Woodruff [CW09] introduced the singularity problem to the streaming model. They proposed a randomized one pass streaming algorithm that uses O(k^2 log n) space to decide if the rank of a matrix is k, and proved an Omega(k^2) lower bound for randomized one-way protocols in the communication complexity model. 

We prove that the randomized/quantum communication complexity of the singularity problem over F_p is Omega(n^2 log p), which implies the same space lower bound for randomized streaming algorithms, even for a constant number of passes. The proof uses the framework by Lee and Shraibman [LS09], but we choose  Fourier coefficients as the witness for the dual approximate norm of the communication matrix. Moreover, we use Fourier analysis to show the same randomized/quantum lower bound when deciding if the determinant of a non-singular matrix is a or b for non-zero a and b.