SearcharxivSearch

arXiv · 1402.5078

A Tight Lower Bound on Certificate Complexity in Terms of Block Sensitivity and Sensitivity

Abstract

Sensitivity, certificate complexity and block sensitivity are widely used Boolean function complexity measures. A longstanding open problem, proposed by Nisan and Szegedy, is whether sensitivity and block sensitivity are polynomially related. Motivated by the constructions of functions which achieve the largest known separations, we study the relation between 1-certificate complexity and 0-sensitivity and 0-block sensitivity. Previously the best known lower bound was $C_1(f)\geq \frac{bs_0(f)}{2 s_0(f)}$, achieved by Kenyon and Kutin. We improve this to $C_1(f)\geq \frac{3 bs_0(f)}{2 s_0(f)}$. While this improvement is only by a constant factor, this is quite important, as it precludes achieving a superquadratic separation between $bs(f)$ and $s(f)$ by iterating functions which reach this bound. In addition, this bound is tight, as it matches the construction of Ambainis and Sun up to an additive constant.

Explore related subjects

Keep this discovery

BibTeXRIS

Andris Ambainis, Krišjānis Prūsis. 2014-02-20. A Tight Lower Bound on Certificate Complexity in Terms of Block Sensitivity and Sensitivity. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-44465-8_4

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

The Computational Complexity of Holant Problems on 4-regular Graphs from the Stable Subgroup Sequence of $SL(2,\mathbb{C})$

The Holant framework provides a general setting for studying counting problems and includes graph homomorphisms (\#GH) and counting constraint satisfaction problems (\#CSP) as special cases. Over the past twenty years, a series of computational complexity dichotomies have been established for Holant problems, but the classification for complex-valued signatures is still open. The main obstacle is the case in which all signatures have even arity. In this paper, we establish a dichotomy for Holant problems with a complex-valued 4-ary signature, which is a key base case for the full classification of Holant problems. We present a new strategy by introducing Schur's theorem, the classification of finite subgroups of $\mathrm{SL}(2,\mathbb{C})$ and stable subgroup sequences into the proof. These new techniques are of independent interest.

cs.CC

Topology inside NC$^1$

We show that ACC$^0$ is precisely what can be computed with constant-width circuits of polynomial size and polylogarithmic genus. This extends a characterization given by Hansen, showing that planar constant-width circuits also characterize ACC$^0$. Thus polylogarithmic genus provides no additional computational power in this model. We consider other generalizations of planarity, including crossing number and thickness. We show that constant-width circuits of polynomial size and thickness two already suffice to capture all of NC$^1$.

cs.CC