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Register a new userExplicit Proofs and The Flip
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Ketan Mulmuley D
Publication date
2010
fields
Informatics Engineering
and research's language is
English
Authors
Ketan Mulmuley
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This article describes a formal strategy of geometric complexity theory (GCT) to resolve the {em self referential paradox} in the $P$ vs. $NP$ and related problems. The strategy, called the {em flip}, is to go for {em explicit proofs} of these problems. By an explicit proof we mean a proof that constructs proof certificates of hardness that are easy to verify, construct and decode. The main result in this paper says that (1) any proof of the arithmetic implication of the $P$ vs. $NP$ conjecture is close to an explicit proof in the sense that it can be transformed into an explicit proof by proving in addition that arithmetic circuit identity testing can be derandomized in a blackbox fashion, and (2) stronger forms of these arithmetic hardness and derandomization conjectures together imply a polynomial time algorithm for a formidable explicit construction problem in algebraic geometry. This may explain why these conjectures, which look so elementary at the surface, have turned out to be so hard.
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Geometric complexity theory (GCT) is an approach to the P vs. NP and related problems. This article gives its complexity theoretic overview without assuming any background in algebraic geometry or representation theory.
For every constant c > 0, we show that there is a family {P_{N, c}} of polynomials whose degree and algebraic circuit complexity are polynomially bounded in the number of variables, that satisfies the following properties: * For every family {f_n} of polynomials in VP, where f_n is an n variate polynomial of degree at most n^c with bounded integer coefficients and for N = binom{n^c + n}{n}, P_{N,c} emph{vanishes} on the coefficient vector of f_n. * There exists a family {h_n} of polynomials where h_n is an n variate polynomial of degree at most n^c with bounded integer coefficients such that for N = binom{n^c + n}{n}, P_{N,c} emph{does not vanish} on the coefficient vector of h_n. In other words, there are efficiently computable equations for polynomials in VP that have small integer coefficients. In fact, we also prove an analogous statement for the seemingly larger class VNP. Thus, in this setting of polynomials with small integer coefficients, this provides evidence emph{against} a natural proof like barrier for proving algebraic circuit lower bounds, a framework for which was proposed in the works of Forbes, Shpilka and Volk (2018), and Grochow, Kumar, Saks and Saraf (2017). Our proofs are elementary and rely on the existence of (non-explicit) hitting sets for VP (and VNP) to show that there are efficiently constructible, low degree equations for these classes. Our proofs also extend to finite fields of small size.
We study the computational complexity of approximating the 2->q norm of linear operators (defined as ||A||_{2->q} = sup_v ||Av||_q/||v||_2), as well as connections between this question and issues arising in quantum information theory and the study of Khots Unique Games Conjecture (UGC). We show the following: 1. For any constant even integer q>=4, a graph $G$ is a small-set expander if and only if the projector into the span of the top eigenvectors of Gs adjacency matrix has bounded 2->q norm. As a corollary, a good approximation to the 2->q norm will refute the Small-Set Expansion Conjecture--a close variant of the UGC. We also show that such a good approximation can be obtained in exp(n^(2/q)) time, thus obtaining a different proof of the known subexponential algorithm for Small Set Expansion. 2. Constant rounds of the Sum of Squares semidefinite programing hierarchy certify an upper bound on the 2->4 norm of the projector to low-degree polynomials over the Boolean cube, as well certify the unsatisfiability of the noisy cube and short code based instances of Unique Games considered by prior works. This improves on the previous upper bound of exp(poly log n) rounds (for the short code), as well as separates the Sum of Squares/Lasserre hierarchy from weaker hierarchies that were known to require omega(1) rounds. 3. We show reductions between computing the 2->4 norm and computing the injective tensor norm of a tensor, a problem with connections to quantum information theory. Three corollaries are: (i) the 2->4 norm is NP-hard to approximate to precision inverse-polynomial in the dimension, (ii) the 2->4 norm does not have a good approximation (in the sense above) unless 3-SAT can be solved in time exp(sqrt(n) polylog(n)), and (iii) known algorithms for the quantum separability problem imply a non-trivial additive approximation for the 2->4 norm.
We study the arithmetic circuit complexity of some well-known family of polynomials through the lens of parameterized complexity. Our main focus is on the construction of explicit algebraic branching programs (ABP) for determinant and permanent polynomials of the emph{rectangular} symbolic matrix in both commutative and noncommutative settings. The main results are: 1. We show an explicit $O^{*}({nchoose {downarrow k/2}})$-size ABP construction for noncommutative permanent polynomial of $ktimes n$ symbolic matrix. We obtain this via an explicit ABP construction of size $O^{*}({nchoose {downarrow k/2}})$ for $S_{n,k}^*$, noncommutative symmetrized version of the elementary symmetric polynomial $S_{n,k}$. 2. We obtain an explicit $O^{*}(2^k)$-size ABP construction for the commutative rectangular determinant polynomial of the $ktimes n$ symbolic matrix. 3. In contrast, we show that evaluating the rectangular noncommutative determinant over rational matrices is $W[1]$-hard.
This paper studies a generalization of multi-prover interactive proofs in which a verifier interacts with two competing teams of provers: one team attempts to convince the verifier to accept while the other attempts to convince the verifier to reject. Each team consists of two provers who jointly implement a no-signaling strategy. No-signaling strategies are a curious class of joint strategy that cannot in general be implemented without communication between the provers, yet cannot be used as a black box to establish communication between them. Attention is restricted in this paper to two-turn interactions in which the verifier asks questions of each of the four provers and decides whether to accept or reject based on their responses. We prove that the complexity class of decision problems that admit two-turn interactive proofs with competing teams of no-signaling provers is a subset of PSPACE. This upper bound matches existing PSPACE lower bounds on the following two disparate and weaker classes of interactive proof: 1. Two-turn multi-prover interactive proofs with only one team of no-signaling provers. 2. Two-turn competing-prover interactive proofs with only one prover per team. Our result implies that the complexity of these two models is unchanged by the addition of a second competing team of no-signaling provers in the first case and by the addition of a second no-signaling prover to each team in the second case. Moreover, our result unifies and subsumes prior PSPACE upper bounds on these classes.
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