In 1979 Valiant showed that the complexity class VP_e of families with polynomially bounded formula size is contained in the class VP_s of families that have algebraic branching programs (ABPs) of polynomially bounded size. Motivated by the problem of separating these classes we study the topological closure VP_e-bar, i.e. the class of polynomials that can be approximated arbitrarily closely by polynomials in VP_e. We describe VP_e-bar with a strikingly simple complete polynomial (in characteristic different from 2) whose recursive definition is similar to the Fibonacci numbers. Further understanding this polynomial seems to be a promising route to new formula lower bounds. Our methods are rooted in the study of ABPs of small constant width. In 1992 Ben-Or and Cleve showed that formula size is polynomially equivalent to width-3 ABP size. We extend their result (in characteristic different from 2) by showing that approximate formula size is polynomially equivalent to approximate width-2 ABP size. This is surprising because in 2011 Allender and Wang gave explicit polynomials that cannot be computed by width-2 ABPs at all! The details of our construction lead to the aforementioned characterization of VP_e-bar. As a natural continuation of this work we prove that the class VNP can be described as the class of families that admit a hypercube summation of polynomially bounded dimension over a product of polynomially many affine linear forms. This gives the first separations of algebraic complexity classes from their nondeterministic analogs.
In the algebraic setting the smallest formula for the determinant has size @math , which can be deduced from e.g. @cite_37 . The best known lower bound on the formula size of @math is @math by @cite_24 . That paper also gives a quadratic lower bound for an explicit polynomial (note that the lower bound for the determinant is not quadratic in the number of variables).
@cite_24 @cite_37
2010163765 2313549751 2084050956 30524954
We establish a lower bound for the formula size of quolynomials over arbitrary fields. Our basic formula operations are addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. The proof is based on Neciporuk’s [Soviet Math. Doklady, 7 (1966), pp. 999–1000] lower bound for Boolean functions and uses formal power series. This result immediately yields a lower bound for the formula size of rational functions over infinite fields. We also show how to adapt Neciporuk’s method to rational functions over finite fields. These results are then used to show that, over any field, the @math determinant function has formula size at least @math . We thus have an algebraic analogue to the @math lower bound for the Boolean determinant due to Kloss [Soviet Math. Doklady, 7 (1966), pp. 1537–1540]. The determinantal complexity of a polynomial f is defined here as the minimal size of a matrix M with affine entries such that f = det M. This function gives a minoration of the more traditional size of an arithmetical formula. Consider the polynomial “permanent” perm d of a d × d matrix with entries X i,j . A conjecture in complexity theory says that the determinantal complexity (dc) of perm d should not be polynomial in d. In this article we prove that dc(permd)≥d2 2, improving the previously known minoration, 2d. We also begin a systematic study of the function dc, and compute it for the homogeneous polynomials of degree 2. We show that, over Q, if an n-variate polynomial of degree d = nO(1) is computable by an arithmetic circuit of size s (respectively by an arithmetic branching program of size s) then it can also be computed by a depth three circuit (i.e. a ΣΠΣ-circuit) of size exp(O(√(d log n log d log s))) (respectively of size exp(O(√(d log n log s))). In particular this yields a ΣΠΣ circuit of size exp(O(√(d log d))) computing the d × d determinant Detd. It also means that if we can prove a lower bound of exp(omega(√(d log d))) on the size of any ΣΠΣ-circuit computing the d × d permanent Permd then we get super polynomial lower bounds for the size of any arithmetic branching program computing Permd. We then give some further results pertaining to derandomizing polynomial identity testing and circuit lower bounds. The ΣΠΣ circuits that we construct have the property that (some of) the intermediate polynomials have degree much higher than d. Indeed such a counterintuitive construction is unavoidable - it is known that in any ΣΠΣ circuit C computing either Detd or Perm_d, if every multiplication gate has fanin at most d (or any constant multiple thereof) then C must have size at least exp(Ω(d)). In this paper, we prove tight lower bounds on the smallest degree of a nonzero polynomial in the ideal generated by @math or @math in the polynomial ring @math , @math are coprime, which is called over @math . The immunity of @math is lower bounded by @math , which is achievable when @math is a multiple of @math ; the immunity of @math is exactly @math for every @math and @math . Our result improves the previous bound @math by Green. We observe how immunity over @math is related to @math circuit lower bound. For example, if the immunity of @math over @math is lower bounded by @math , and @math , then @math requires @math circuit of exponential size to compute.