We study the class of languages, denoted by @math , which have @math -prover games where each prover just sends a bit, with completeness @math and soundness error @math . For the case that @math (i.e., for the case of interactive proofs), Goldreich, Vadhan and Wigderson ( Computational Complexity'02 ) demonstrate that @math exactly characterizes languages having 1-bit proof systems with"non-trivial" soundness (i.e., @math ). We demonstrate that for the case that @math , 1-bit @math -prover games exhibit a significantly richer structure: + (Folklore) When @math , @math ; + When @math , @math ; + When @math , @math ; + For @math and sufficiently large @math , @math ; + For @math , @math . As such, 1-bit @math -prover games yield a natural "quantitative" approach to relating complexity classes such as @math , @math , @math , @math , and @math . We leave open the question of whether a more fine-grained hierarchy (between @math and @math ) can be established for the case when @math .
We also mention the recent work by Drucker @cite_15 that provides a @math -type characterization of @math ; his result is incomparable to our main theorem as he focuses on polynomial-length PCP proofs.
@cite_15
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The current proof of the probabilistically checkable proofs (PCP) theorem (i.e., @math ) is very complicated. One source of difficulty is the technically involved analysis of low-degree tests. Here, we refer to the difficulty of obtaining strong results regarding low-degree tests; namely, results of the type obtained and used by Arora and Safra [J. ACM, 45 (1998), pp. 70--122] and [J. ACM, 45 (1998), pp. 501--555]. In this paper, we eliminate the need to obtain such strong results on low-degree tests when proving the PCP theorem. Although we do not remove the need for low-degree tests altogether, using our results it is now possible to prove the PCP theorem using a simpler analysis of low-degree tests (which yields weaker bounds). In other words, we replace the strong algebraic analysis of low-degree tests presented by Arora and Safra and by a combinatorial lemma (which does not refer to low-degree tests or polynomials). We introduce a 2-round stochastic constraint-satisfaction problem, and show that its approximation version is complete for (the promise version of) the complexity class AM. This gives a PCP characterization' of AM analogous to the PCP Theorem for NP. Similar characterizations have been given for higher levels of the Polynomial Hierarchy, and for PSPACE; however, we suggest that the result for AM might be of particular significance for attempts to derandomize this class. To test this notion, we pose some Randomized Optimization Hypotheses' related to our stochastic CSPs that (in light of our result) would imply collapse results for AM. Unfortunately, the hypotheses appear over-strong, and we present evidence against them. In the process we show that, if some language in NP is hard-on-average against circuits of size 2^ Omega(n) , then there exist hard-on-average optimization problems of a particularly elegant form. All our proofs use a powerful form of PCPs known as Probabilistically Checkable Proofs of Proximity, and demonstrate their versatility. We also use known results on randomness-efficient soundness- and hardness-amplification. In particular, we make essential use of the Impagliazzo-Wigderson generator; our analysis relies on a recent Chernoff-type theorem for expander walks. Assuming that NP @math @math BPTIME( @math ), we show that graph min-bisection, dense @math -subgraph, and bipartite clique have no polynomial time approximation scheme (PTAS). We give a reduction from the minimum distance of code (MDC) problem. Starting with an instance of MDC, we build a quasi-random probabilistically checkable proof (PCP) that suffices to prove the desired inapproximability results. In a quasi-random PCP, the query pattern of the verifier looks random in a certain precise sense. Among the several new techniques we introduce, the most interesting one gives a way of certifying that a given polynomial belongs to a given linear subspace of polynomials. As is important for our purpose, the certificate itself happens to be another polynomial, and it can be checked probabilistically by reading a constant number of its values. In this work we look back into the proof of the PCP (probabilistically checkable proofs) theorem, with the goal of finding new proofs that are “more combinatorial” and arguably simpler. For that we introduce the notion of an assignment tester, which is a strengthening of the standard PCP verifier, in the following sense. Given a statement and an alleged proof for it, while the PCP verifier checks correctness of the statement, the assignment tester checks correctness of the statement and the proof. This notion enables composition that is truly modular; i.e., one can compose two assignment testers without any assumptions on how they are constructed. A related notion called PCPs of proximity was independently introduced in [E. Ben-, Proceedings of the 36th Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing, Chicago, IL, 2004, ACM, New York, 2004, pp. 1-10]. We provide a toolkit of (nontrivial) generic transformations on assignment testers. These transformations may be interesting in their own right, and allow us to present the following two main results: 1. A new proof of the PCP theorem. This proof relies on a rather weak assignment tester given as a “black box.” From this, we construct combinatorially the full PCP. An important component of this proof is a new combinatorial aggregation technique (i.e., a new transformation that allows the verifier to read fewer, though possibly longer, “pieces” of the proof). An implementation of the black-box tester can be obtained from the algebraic proof techniques that already appear in [L. , Proceedings of the 23rd ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing, New Orleans, LA, 1991, ACM, New York, 1991, pp. 21-31; U. , J. ACM, 43 (1996), pp. 268-292]. 2. Our second construction is a “standalone” combinatorial construction showing @math . This implies, for example, that approximating max-SAT is quasi-NP-hard. This construction relies on a transformation that makes an assignment tester “oblivious,” so that the proof locations read are independent of the statement that is being proven. This eliminates, in a rather surprising manner, the need for aggregation in a crucial point in the proof.