Related papers: Lower Bounds Against Sparse Symmetric Functions of…
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…
Proving that there are problems in $\mathsf{P}^\mathsf{NP}$ that require boolean circuits of super-linear size is a major frontier in complexity theory. While such lower bounds are known for larger complexity classes, existing results only…
Proving complexity lower bounds remains a challenging task: we only know how to prove conditional uniform lower bounds and nonuniform lower bounds in restricted circuit models. Williams (STOC 2010) showed how to derive nonuniform lower…
Comparator circuits are a natural circuit model for studying bounded fan-out computation whose power sits between nondeterministic branching programs and general circuits. Despite having been studied for nearly three decades, the first…
We show that there is a randomized algorithm that, when given a small constant-depth Boolean circuit $C$ made up of gates that compute constant-degree Polynomial Threshold functions or PTFs (i.e., Boolean functions that compute signs of…
$ \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…
A recent and active line of work achieves tight lower bounds for fundamental problems under the Strong Exponential Time Hypothesis (SETH). A celebrated result of Backurs and Indyk (STOC'15) proves that the Edit Distance of two sequences of…
Finding exact circuit size is a notorious optimization problem in practice. Whereas modern computers and algorithmic techniques allow to find a circuit of size seven in blink of an eye, it may take more than a week to search for a circuit…
We prove lower bounds for the Minimum Circuit Size Problem (MCSP) in the Sum-of-Squares (SoS) proof system. Our main result is that for every Boolean function $f: \{0,1\}^n \rightarrow \{0,1\}$, SoS requires degree $\Omega(s^{1-\epsilon})$…
Parity-SAT is the problem of determining whether a given CNF formula has an odd number of satisfying assignments. As a canonical $\oplus$P-complete problem, it represents a fundamental variant of the exact model counting problem (#SAT).…
We show that there is a language in $\mathsf{S}_2\mathsf{E}/_1$ (symmetric exponential time with one bit of advice) with circuit complexity at least $2^n/n$. In particular, the above also implies the same near-maximum circuit lower bounds…
We study the counting version of the Boolean satisfiability problem #SAT using the ZH-calculus, a graphical language originally introduced to reason about quantum circuits. Using this, we generalize #SAT to a weighted variant we call…
We revisit the satisfiability problem for two-variable logic, denoted by SAT(FO2), which is known to be NEXP-complete. The upper bound is usually derived from its well known Exponential Size Model (ESM) property. Whether it can be…
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…
A line of work initiated by Fortnow in 1997 has proven model-independent time-space lower bounds for the $\mathsf{SAT}$ problem and related problems within the polynomial-time hierarchy. For example, for the $\mathsf{SAT}$ problem, the…
We give new quantum algorithms for evaluating composed functions whose inputs may be shared between bottom-level gates. Let $f$ be an $m$-bit Boolean function and consider an $n$-bit function $F$ obtained by applying $f$ to conjunctions of…
This paper analyzes to what extent it is possible to efficiently reduce the number of clauses in NP-hard satisfiability problems, without changing the answer. Upper and lower bounds are established using the concept of kernelization.…
In a recent breakthrough, Chen, Hirahara and Ren prove that $\mathsf{S_2E}/_1 \not\subset \mathsf{SIZE}[2^n/n]$ by giving a single-valued $\mathsf{FS_2P}$ algorithm for the Range Avoidance Problem ($\mathsf{Avoid}$) that works for…
We present a simple randomized algorithm that approximates the number of satisfying assignments of Boolean formulas in conjunctive normal form. To the best of our knowledge this is the first algorithm which approximates #k-SAT for any k >=…