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Documents authored by Block, Alexander R.

Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.CCC.2023.14
On Relaxed Locally Decodable Codes for Hamming and Insertion-Deletion Errors

Authors: Alexander R. Block, Jeremiah Blocki, Kuan Cheng, Elena Grigorescu, Xin Li, Yu Zheng, and Minshen Zhu

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 264, 38th Computational Complexity Conference (CCC 2023)

Abstract
Locally Decodable Codes (LDCs) are error-correcting codes C:Σⁿ → Σ^m, encoding messages in Σⁿ to codewords in Σ^m, with super-fast decoding algorithms. They are important mathematical objects in many areas of theoretical computer science, yet the best constructions so far have codeword length m that is super-polynomial in n, for codes with constant query complexity and constant alphabet size. In a very surprising result, Ben-Sasson, Goldreich, Harsha, Sudan, and Vadhan (SICOMP 2006) show how to construct a relaxed version of LDCs (RLDCs) with constant query complexity and almost linear codeword length over the binary alphabet, and used them to obtain significantly-improved constructions of Probabilistically Checkable Proofs. In this work, we study RLDCs in the standard Hamming-error setting, and introduce their variants in the insertion and deletion (Insdel) error setting. Standard LDCs for Insdel errors were first studied by Ostrovsky and Paskin-Cherniavsky (Information Theoretic Security, 2015), and are further motivated by recent advances in DNA random access bio-technologies. Our first result is an exponential lower bound on the length of Hamming RLDCs making 2 queries (even adaptively), over the binary alphabet. This answers a question explicitly raised by Gur and Lachish (SICOMP 2021) and is the first exponential lower bound for RLDCs. Combined with the results of Ben-Sasson et al., our result exhibits a "phase-transition"-type behavior on the codeword length for some constant-query complexity. We achieve these lower bounds via a transformation of RLDCs to standard Hamming LDCs, using a careful analysis of restrictions of message bits that fix codeword bits. We further define two variants of RLDCs in the Insdel-error setting, a weak and a strong version. On the one hand, we construct weak Insdel RLDCs with almost linear codeword length and constant query complexity, matching the parameters of the Hamming variants. On the other hand, we prove exponential lower bounds for strong Insdel RLDCs. These results demonstrate that, while these variants are equivalent in the Hamming setting, they are significantly different in the insdel setting. Our results also prove a strict separation between Hamming RLDCs and Insdel RLDCs.
Cite as

Alexander R. Block, Jeremiah Blocki, Kuan Cheng, Elena Grigorescu, Xin Li, Yu Zheng, and Minshen Zhu. On Relaxed Locally Decodable Codes for Hamming and Insertion-Deletion Errors. In 38th Computational Complexity Conference (CCC 2023). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 264, pp. 14:1-14:25, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2023)

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@InProceedings{block_et_al:LIPIcs.CCC.2023.14,
  author =	{Block, Alexander R. and Blocki, Jeremiah and Cheng, Kuan and Grigorescu, Elena and Li, Xin and Zheng, Yu and Zhu, Minshen},
  title =	{{On Relaxed Locally Decodable Codes for Hamming and Insertion-Deletion Errors}},
  booktitle =	{38th Computational Complexity Conference (CCC 2023)},
  pages =	{14:1--14:25},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-282-2},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2023},
  volume =	{264},
  editor =	{Ta-Shma, Amnon},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.CCC.2023.14},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-182847},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.CCC.2023.14},
  annote =	{Keywords: Relaxed Locally Decodable Codes, Hamming Errors, Insdel Errors, Lower Bounds}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ITC.2021.16
P₄-free Partition and Cover Numbers & Applications

Authors: Alexander R. Block, Simina Brânzei, Hemanta K. Maji, Himanshi Mehta, Tamalika Mukherjee, and Hai H. Nguyen

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 199, 2nd Conference on Information-Theoretic Cryptography (ITC 2021)

Abstract
P₄-free graphs- also known as cographs, complement-reducible graphs, or hereditary Dacey graphs-have been well studied in graph theory. Motivated by computer science and information theory applications, our work encodes (flat) joint probability distributions and Boolean functions as bipartite graphs and studies bipartite P₄-free graphs. For these applications, the graph properties of edge partitioning and covering a bipartite graph using the minimum number of these graphs are particularly relevant. Previously, such graph properties have appeared in leakage-resilient cryptography and (variants of) coloring problems. Interestingly, our covering problem is closely related to the well-studied problem of product (a.k.a., Prague) dimension of loopless undirected graphs, which allows us to employ algebraic lower-bounding techniques for the product/Prague dimension. We prove that computing these numbers is NP-complete, even for bipartite graphs. We establish a connection to the (unsolved) Zarankiewicz problem to show that there are bipartite graphs with size-N partite sets such that these numbers are at least ε⋅N^{1-2ε}, for ε ∈ {1/3,1/4,1/5,...}. Finally, we accurately estimate these numbers for bipartite graphs encoding well-studied Boolean functions from circuit complexity, such as set intersection, set disjointness, and inequality. For applications in information theory and communication & cryptographic complexity, we consider a system where a setup samples from a (flat) joint distribution and gives the participants, Alice and Bob, their portion from this joint sample. Alice and Bob’s objective is to non-interactively establish a shared key and extract the left-over entropy from their portion of the samples as independent private randomness. A genie, who observes the joint sample, provides appropriate assistance to help Alice and Bob with their objective. Lower bounds to the minimum size of the genie’s assistance translate into communication and cryptographic lower bounds. We show that (the log₂ of) the P₄-free partition number of a graph encoding the joint distribution that the setup uses is equivalent to the size of the genie’s assistance. Consequently, the joint distributions corresponding to the bipartite graphs constructed above with high P₄-free partition numbers correspond to joint distributions requiring more assistance from the genie. As a representative application in non-deterministic communication complexity, we study the communication complexity of nondeterministic protocols augmented by access to the equality oracle at the output. We show that (the log₂ of) the P₄-free cover number of the bipartite graph encoding a Boolean function f is equivalent to the minimum size of the nondeterministic input required by the parties (referred to as the communication complexity of f in this model). Consequently, the functions corresponding to the bipartite graphs with high P₄-free cover numbers have high communication complexity. Furthermore, there are functions with communication complexity close to the naïve protocol where the nondeterministic input reveals a party’s input. Finally, the access to the equality oracle reduces the communication complexity of computing set disjointness by a constant factor in contrast to the model where parties do not have access to the equality oracle. To compute the inequality function, we show an exponential reduction in the communication complexity, and this bound is optimal. On the other hand, access to the equality oracle is (nearly) useless for computing set intersection.
Cite as

Alexander R. Block, Simina Brânzei, Hemanta K. Maji, Himanshi Mehta, Tamalika Mukherjee, and Hai H. Nguyen. P₄-free Partition and Cover Numbers & Applications. In 2nd Conference on Information-Theoretic Cryptography (ITC 2021). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 199, pp. 16:1-16:25, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2021)

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@InProceedings{block_et_al:LIPIcs.ITC.2021.16,
  author =	{Block, Alexander R. and Br\^{a}nzei, Simina and Maji, Hemanta K. and Mehta, Himanshi and Mukherjee, Tamalika and Nguyen, Hai H.},
  title =	{{P₄-free Partition and Cover Numbers \& Applications}},
  booktitle =	{2nd Conference on Information-Theoretic Cryptography (ITC 2021)},
  pages =	{16:1--16:25},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-197-9},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2021},
  volume =	{199},
  editor =	{Tessaro, Stefano},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ITC.2021.16},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-143357},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ITC.2021.16},
  annote =	{Keywords: Secure keys, Secure private randomness, Gray-Wyner system, Cryptographic complexity, Nondeterministic communication complexity, Leakage-resilience, Combinatorial optimization, Product dimension, Zarankiewicz problem, Algebraic lower-bounding techniques, P₄-free partition number, P₄-free cover number}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.FSTTCS.2020.16
Locally Decodable/Correctable Codes for Insertions and Deletions

Authors: Alexander R. Block, Jeremiah Blocki, Elena Grigorescu, Shubhang Kulkarni, and Minshen Zhu

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 182, 40th IARCS Annual Conference on Foundations of Software Technology and Theoretical Computer Science (FSTTCS 2020)

Abstract
Recent efforts in coding theory have focused on building codes for insertions and deletions, called insdel codes, with optimal trade-offs between their redundancy and their error-correction capabilities, as well as efficient encoding and decoding algorithms. In many applications, polynomial running time may still be prohibitively expensive, which has motivated the study of codes with super-efficient decoding algorithms. These have led to the well-studied notions of Locally Decodable Codes (LDCs) and Locally Correctable Codes (LCCs). Inspired by these notions, Ostrovsky and Paskin-Cherniavsky (Information Theoretic Security, 2015) generalized Hamming LDCs to insertions and deletions. To the best of our knowledge, these are the only known results that study the analogues of Hamming LDCs in channels performing insertions and deletions. Here we continue the study of insdel codes that admit local algorithms. Specifically, we reprove the results of Ostrovsky and Paskin-Cherniavsky for insdel LDCs using a different set of techniques. We also observe that the techniques extend to constructions of LCCs. Specifically, we obtain insdel LDCs and LCCs from their Hamming LDCs and LCCs analogues, respectively. The rate and error-correction capability blow up only by a constant factor, while the query complexity blows up by a poly log factor in the block length. Since insdel locally decodable/correctble codes are scarcely studied in the literature, we believe our results and techniques may lead to further research. In particular, we conjecture that constant-query insdel LDCs/LCCs do not exist.
Cite as

Alexander R. Block, Jeremiah Blocki, Elena Grigorescu, Shubhang Kulkarni, and Minshen Zhu. Locally Decodable/Correctable Codes for Insertions and Deletions. In 40th IARCS Annual Conference on Foundations of Software Technology and Theoretical Computer Science (FSTTCS 2020). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 182, pp. 16:1-16:17, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2020)

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@InProceedings{block_et_al:LIPIcs.FSTTCS.2020.16,
  author =	{Block, Alexander R. and Blocki, Jeremiah and Grigorescu, Elena and Kulkarni, Shubhang and Zhu, Minshen},
  title =	{{Locally Decodable/Correctable Codes for Insertions and Deletions}},
  booktitle =	{40th IARCS Annual Conference on Foundations of Software Technology and Theoretical Computer Science (FSTTCS 2020)},
  pages =	{16:1--16:17},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-174-0},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2020},
  volume =	{182},
  editor =	{Saxena, Nitin and Simon, Sunil},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.FSTTCS.2020.16},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-132577},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.FSTTCS.2020.16},
  annote =	{Keywords: Locally decodable/correctable codes, insert-delete channel}
}
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