We investigate the complexity of uniform OR circuits and AND circuits of polynomial-size and depth. As their name suggests, OR circuits have OR gates as their computation gates, as well as the usual input, output and constant (0/1) gates. As is the norm for Boolean circuits, our circuits have multiple sink gates, which implies that an OR circuit computes an OR function on some subset of its input variables. Determining that subset amounts to solving a number of reachability questions on a polynomial-size directed graph (which input gates are connected to the output gate?), taken from a very sparse set of graphs. However, it is not obvious whether or not this (restricted) reachability problem can be solved, by say, uniform AC^0 circuits (constant depth, polynomial-size, AND, OR, NOT gates). This is one reason why characterizing the power of these simple-looking circuits in terms of uniform classes turns out to be intriguing. Another is that the model itself seems particularly natural and worthy of study. Our goal is the systematic characterization of uniform polynomial-size OR circuits, and AND circuits, in terms of known uniform machine-based complexity classes. In particular, we consider the languages reducible to such uniform families of OR circuits, and AND circuits, under a variety of reduction types. We give upper and lower bounds on the computational power of these language classes. We find that these complexity classes are closely related to tallyNL, the set of unary languages within NL, and to sets reducible to tallyNL. Specifically, for a variety of types of reductions (many-one, conjunctive truth table, disjunctive truth table, truth table, Turing) we give characterizations of languages reducible to OR circuit classes in terms of languages reducible to tallyNL classes. Then, some of these OR classes are shown to coincide, and some are proven to be distinct. We give analogous results for AND circuits. Finally, for many of our OR circuit classes, and analogous AND circuit classes, we prove whether or not the two classes coincide, although we leave one such inclusion open.
Limits on the number of satisfying assignments for CNS instances with n variables and m clauses are derived from various inequalities. Some bounds can be calculated in polynomial time, sharper bounds demand information about the distribution of the number of unsatisfied clauses. Quite generally, the number of satisfying assignments involve variance and mean of this distribution. For large formulae, m>>1, bounds vary with 2**n/n, so they may be of use only for instances with a large number of satisfying assignments.
Let $C$ be a depth-3 arithmetic circuit of size at most $s$, computing a polynomial $ f in mathbb{F}[x_1,ldots, x_n] $ (where $mathbb{F}$ = $mathbb{Q}$ or $mathbb{C}$) and the fan-in of the product gates of $C$ is bounded by $d$. We give a deterministic polynomial identity testing algorithm to check whether $fequiv 0$ or not in time $ 2^d text{ poly}(n,s) $.
Consider the problem of determining whether there exists a spanning hypertree in a given k-uniform hypergraph. This problem is trivially in P for k=2, and is NP-complete for k>= 4, whereas for k=3, there exists a polynomial-time algorithm based on Lovasz theory of polymatroid matching. Here we give a completely different, randomized polynomial-time algorithm in the case k=3. The main ingredients are a Pfaffian formula by Vaintrob and one of the authors (G.M.) for a polynomial that enumerates spanning hypertrees with some signs, and a lemma on the number of roots of polynomials over a finite field.