Related papers: An average-case depth hierarchy theorem for Boolea…

$ \newcommand{\cclass}[1]{{\normalfont\textsf{##1}}} $We show average-case lower bounds for explicit Boolean functions against bounded-depth threshold circuits with a superlinear number of wires. We show that for each integer $d > 1$, there…

We show that sharp thresholds for Boolean functions directly imply average-case circuit lower bounds. More formally we show that any Boolean function exhibiting a sharp enough threshold at \emph{arbitrary} critical density cannot be…

We establish a generic form of hardness amplification for the approximability of constant-depth Boolean circuits by polynomials. Specifically, we show that if a Boolean circuit cannot be pointwise approximated by low-degree polynomials to…

In this paper, we show that for every constant $0 < \epsilon < 1/2$ and for every constant $d \geq 2$, the minimum size of a depth $d$ Boolean circuit that $\epsilon$-approximates Majority function on $n$ variables is…

Agrawal and Vinay [AV08] showed how any polynomial size arithmetic circuit can be thought of as a depth four arithmetic circuit of subexponential size. The resulting circuit size in this simulation was more carefully analyzed by Korian…

We establish new separations between the power of monotone and general (non-monotone) Boolean circuits: - For every $k \geq 1$, there is a monotone function in ${\sf AC^0}$ that requires monotone circuits of depth $\Omega(\log^k n)$. This…

The approximate degree of a Boolean function $f\colon\{0,1\}^n\to\{0,1\}$ is the minimum degree of a real polynomial $p$ that approximates $f$ pointwise: $|f(x)-p(x)|\leq1/3$ for all $x\in\{0,1\}^n.$ For every $\delta>0,$ we construct CNF…

Recently, Forbes, Kumar and Saptharishi [CCC, 2016] proved that there exists an explicit $d^{O(1)}$-variate and degree $d$ polynomial $P_{d}\in VNP$ such that if any depth four circuit $C$ of bounded formal degree $d$ which computes a…

A notorious open question in circuit complexity is whether Boolean operations of arbitrary arity can efficiently be expressed using modular counting gates only. H{\aa}stad's celebrated switching lemma yields exponential lower bounds for the…

We give the first non-trivial upper bounds on the average sensitivity and noise sensitivity of degree-$d$ polynomial threshold functions (PTFs). These bounds hold both for PTFs over the Boolean hypercube and for PTFs over $\R^n$ under the…

In their paper on the "chasm at depth four", Agrawal and Vinay have shown that polynomials in m variables of degree O(m) which admit arithmetic circuits of size 2^o(m) also admit arithmetic circuits of depth four and size 2^o(m). This…

We prove super-polynomial lower bounds on the size of propositional proof systems operating with constant-depth algebraic circuits over fields of zero characteristic. Specifically, we show that the subset-sum variant…

The approximate degree of a Boolean function $f \colon \{-1, 1\}^n \rightarrow \{-1, 1\}$ is the least degree of a real polynomial that approximates $f$ pointwise to error at most $1/3$. We introduce a generic method for increasing the…

The problem of constructing hazard-free Boolean circuits dates back to the 1940s and is an important problem in circuit design. Our main lower-bound result unconditionally shows the existence of functions whose circuit complexity is…

We prove the first Fixed-depth Size-hierarchy Theorem for uniform AC$^0[\oplus]$ circuits; in particular, for fixed $d$, the class $\mathcal{C}_{d,k}$ of uniform AC$^0[\oplus]$ formulas of depth $d$ and size $n^k$ form an infinite…

We give the first non-trivial upper bounds on the average sensitivity and noise sensitivity of polynomial threshold functions. More specifically, for a Boolean function f on n variables equal to the sign of a real, multivariate polynomial…

Let $ACC \circ THR$ be the class of constant-depth circuits comprised of AND, OR, and MOD$m$ gates (for some constant $m > 1$), with a bottom layer of gates computing arbitrary linear threshold functions. This class of circuits can be seen…

We say that a circuit $C$ over a field $F$ functionally computes an $n$-variate polynomial $P$ if for every $x \in \{0,1\}^n$ we have that $C(x) = P(x)$. This is in contrast to syntactically computing $P$, when $C \equiv P$ as formal…

Let $U_{k,N}$ denote the Boolean function which takes as input $k$ strings of $N$ bits each, representing $k$ numbers $a^{(1)},\dots,a^{(k)}$ in $\{0,1,\dots,2^{N}-1\}$, and outputs 1 if and only if $a^{(1)} + \cdots + a^{(k)} \geq 2^N.$…

In this paper, we show exponential lower bounds for the class of homogeneous depth-$5$ circuits over all small finite fields. More formally, we show that there is an explicit family $\{P_d : d \in \mathbb{N}\}$ of polynomials in…