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DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.CCC.2022.8

Trading Time and Space in Catalytic Branching Programs

Authors: James Cook and Ian Mertz

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 234, 37th Computational Complexity Conference (CCC 2022)

Abstract

An m-catalytic branching program (Girard, Koucký, McKenzie 2015) is a set of m distinct branching programs for f which are permitted to share internal (i.e. non-source non-sink) nodes. While originally introduced as a non-uniform analogue to catalytic space, this also gives a natural notion of amortized non-uniform space complexity for f, namely the smallest value |G|/m for an m-catalytic branching program G for f (Potechin 2017). Potechin (2017) showed that every function f has amortized size O(n), witnessed by an m-catalytic branching program where m = 2^(2ⁿ-1). We recreate this result by defining a catalytic algorithm for evaluating polynomials using a large amount of space but O(n) time. This allows us to balance this with previously known algorithms which are efficient with respect to space at the cost of time (Cook, Mertz 2020, 2021). We show that for any ε ≥ 2n^(-1), every function f has an m-catalytic branching program of size O_ε(mn), where m = 2^(2^(ε n)). We similarly recreate an improved result due to Robere and Zuiddam (2021), and show that for d ≤ n and ε ≥ 2d^(-1), the same result holds for m = 2^binom(n, ≤ ε d) as long as f is a degree-d polynomial over 𝔽₂. We also show that for certain classes of functions, m can be reduced to 2^(poly n) while still maintaining linear or quasi-linear amortized size. In the other direction, we bound the necessary length, and by extension the amortized size, of any permutation branching program for an arbitrary function between 3n and 4n-4.

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James Cook and Ian Mertz. Trading Time and Space in Catalytic Branching Programs. In 37th Computational Complexity Conference (CCC 2022). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 234, pp. 8:1-8:21, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2022)

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@InProceedings{cook_et_al:LIPIcs.CCC.2022.8,
  author =	{Cook, James and Mertz, Ian},
  title =	{{Trading Time and Space in Catalytic Branching Programs}},
  booktitle =	{37th Computational Complexity Conference (CCC 2022)},
  pages =	{8:1--8:21},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-241-9},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2022},
  volume =	{234},
  editor =	{Lovett, Shachar},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.CCC.2022.8},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-165708},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.CCC.2022.8},
  annote =	{Keywords: complexity theory, branching programs, amortized, space complexity, catalytic computation}
}

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DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ITCS.2022.104

Lifting with Sunflowers

Authors: Shachar Lovett, Raghu Meka, Ian Mertz, Toniann Pitassi, and Jiapeng Zhang

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 215, 13th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science Conference (ITCS 2022)

Abstract

Query-to-communication lifting theorems translate lower bounds on query complexity to lower bounds for the corresponding communication model. In this paper, we give a simplified proof of deterministic lifting (in both the tree-like and dag-like settings). Our proof uses elementary counting together with a novel connection to the sunflower lemma. In addition to a simplified proof, our approach opens up a new avenue of attack towards proving lifting theorems with improved gadget size - one of the main challenges in the area. Focusing on one of the most widely used gadgets - the index gadget - existing lifting techniques are known to require at least a quadratic gadget size. Our new approach combined with robust sunflower lemmas allows us to reduce the gadget size to near linear. We conjecture that it can be further improved to polylogarithmic, similar to the known bounds for the corresponding robust sunflower lemmas.

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Shachar Lovett, Raghu Meka, Ian Mertz, Toniann Pitassi, and Jiapeng Zhang. Lifting with Sunflowers. In 13th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science Conference (ITCS 2022). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 215, pp. 104:1-104:24, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2022)

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@InProceedings{lovett_et_al:LIPIcs.ITCS.2022.104,
  author =	{Lovett, Shachar and Meka, Raghu and Mertz, Ian and Pitassi, Toniann and Zhang, Jiapeng},
  title =	{{Lifting with Sunflowers}},
  booktitle =	{13th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science Conference (ITCS 2022)},
  pages =	{104:1--104:24},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-217-4},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2022},
  volume =	{215},
  editor =	{Braverman, Mark},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ITCS.2022.104},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-157004},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ITCS.2022.104},
  annote =	{Keywords: Lifting theorems, communication complexity, combinatorics, sunflowers}
}

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Track A: Algorithms, Complexity and Games

DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2019.84

Short Proofs Are Hard to Find

Authors: Ian Mertz, Toniann Pitassi, and Yuanhao Wei

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 132, 46th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2019)

Abstract

We obtain a streamlined proof of an important result by Alekhnovich and Razborov [Michael Alekhnovich and Alexander A. Razborov, 2008], showing that it is hard to automatize both tree-like and general Resolution. Under a different assumption than [Michael Alekhnovich and Alexander A. Razborov, 2008], our simplified proof gives improved bounds: we show under ETH that these proof systems are not automatizable in time n^f(n), whenever f(n) = o(log^{1/7 - epsilon} log n) for any epsilon > 0. Previously non-automatizability was only known for f(n) = O(1). Our proof also extends fairly straightforwardly to prove similar hardness results for PCR and Res(r).

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Ian Mertz, Toniann Pitassi, and Yuanhao Wei. Short Proofs Are Hard to Find. In 46th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2019). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 132, pp. 84:1-84:16, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2019)

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@InProceedings{mertz_et_al:LIPIcs.ICALP.2019.84,
  author =	{Mertz, Ian and Pitassi, Toniann and Wei, Yuanhao},
  title =	{{Short Proofs Are Hard to Find}},
  booktitle =	{46th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2019)},
  pages =	{84:1--84:16},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-109-2},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2019},
  volume =	{132},
  editor =	{Baier, Christel and Chatzigiannakis, Ioannis and Flocchini, Paola and Leonardi, Stefano},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2019.84},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-106605},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2019.84},
  annote =	{Keywords: automatizability, Resolution, SAT solvers, proof complexity}
}

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Documents authored by Mertz, Ian

Trading Time and Space in Catalytic Branching Programs

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Lifting with Sunflowers

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Short Proofs Are Hard to Find

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