Related papers: Proof Complexity Lower Bounds from Algebraic Circu…

We develop a new tool, namely polynomial and linear algebraic methods, for studying systems of word equations. We illustrate its usefulness by giving essentially simpler proofs of several hard problems. At the same time we prove extensions…

In this paper, we study the structure of set-multilinear arithmetic circuits and set-multilinear branching programs with the aim of showing lower bound results. We define some natural restrictions of these models for which we are able to…

The Sum-of-Squares (SoS) hierarchy, also known as Lasserre hierarchy, has emerged as a promising tool in optimization. However, it remains unclear whether fixed-degree SoS proofs can be automated [O'Donnell (2017)]. Indeed, there are…

Valiant's famous VP vs. VNP conjecture states that the symbolic permanent polynomial does not have polynomial-size algebraic circuits. However, the best upper bound on the size of the circuits computing the permanent is exponential.…

The *algebrization barrier*, proposed by Aaronson and Wigderson (STOC '08, ToCT '09), captures the limitations of many complexity-theoretic techniques based on arithmetization. Notably, several circuit lower bounds that overcome the…

We describe and motivate a proposed new approach to lowerbounding the circuit complexity of boolean functions, based on a new formalization of "patterns" as elements of a special basis of the vector space of all truth table properties. We…

Most state-of-the-art satisfiability algorithms today are variants of the DPLL procedure augmented with clause learning. The main bottleneck for such algorithms, other than the obvious one of time, is the amount of memory used. In the field…

Let $p_{\min}$ denote the minimum of a polynomial $p$ over a (general) compact semialgebraic set $S \subseteq \mathbb{R}^n$. A standard way to approximate $p_{\min}$ is via hierarchies built from Positivstellens\"atze, which certify…

The Strong Exponential Time Hypothesis (SETH) asserts that for every $\varepsilon>0$ there exists $k$ such that $k$-SAT requires time $(2-\varepsilon)^n$. The field of fine-grained complexity has leveraged SETH to prove quite tight…

Many systems of interest in cryptography consist of equations of the same degree. Under the assumption that the degree of regularity is finite, we prove upper bounds on the degree of regularity of a system of equations of the same degree,…

Hardness magnification reduces major complexity separations (such as $\mathsf{\mathsf{EXP}} \nsubseteq \mathsf{NC}^1$) to proving lower bounds for some natural problem $Q$ against weak circuit models. Several recent works [OS18, MMW19,…

We prove a polynomial bound in the "true complexity" problem of Gowers and Wolf. The proof uses only repeated applications of the Cauchy--Schwarz inequality, answering negatively a question posed by Gowers and Wolf. To choose and reason…

In this paper, we prove superpolynomial lower bounds for the class of homogeneous depth 4 arithmetic circuits. We give an explicit polynomial in VNP of degree $n$ in $n^2$ variables such that any homogeneous depth 4 arithmetic circuit…

Motivated by the recent experimental demonstrations of quantum supremacy, proving the hardness of the output of random quantum circuits is an imperative near term goal. We prove under the complexity theoretical assumption of the…

As a natural extension of the SAT problem, an array of proof systems for quantified Boolean formulas (QBF) have been proposed, many of which extend a propositional proof system to handle universal quantification. By formalising the…

Low-degree polynomials have emerged as a powerful paradigm for providing evidence of statistical-computational gaps across a variety of high-dimensional statistical models [Wein25]. For detection problems -- where the goal is to test a…

First of all we give some reasons that "natural proofs" built not a barrier to prove P $\not=$ NP using Boolean complexity. Then we investigate the approximation method for its extension to prove super-polynomial lower bounds for the…

We study the complexity of inverse cellular automata on configurations of bounded size. Deciding injectivity in this setting is co-NP-complete by a theorem of Durand. We give a simpler proof of this theorem by a direct reduction from UNSAT…

With deep neural networks providing state-of-the-art machine learning models for numerous machine learning tasks, quantifying the robustness of these models has become an important area of research. However, most of the research literature…

We give a new proof of the NIP arithmetic regularity lemma for finite groups (due to the authors and Pillay), which describes the approximate structure of "NIP sets" in finite groups, i.e., subsets whose collection of left translates has…