English

New Separations Results for External Information

Computational Complexity 2021-03-09 v1 Information Theory math.IT

Abstract

We obtain new separation results for the two-party external information complexity of boolean functions. The external information complexity of a function f(x,y)f(x,y) is the minimum amount of information a two-party protocol computing ff must reveal to an outside observer about the input. We obtain the following results: 1. We prove an exponential separation between external and internal information complexity, which is the best possible; previously no separation was known. 2. We prove a near-quadratic separation between amortized zero-error communication complexity and external information complexity for total functions, disproving a conjecture of \cite{Bravermansurvey}. 3. We prove a matching upper showing that our separation result is tight.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2103.04049,
  title  = {New Separations Results for External Information},
  author = {Mark Braverman and Dor Minzer},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2103.04049},
  year   = {2021}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-23T23:49:47.484Z