arXiv subjects

Sébastien Tavenas

Publications and source records attributed to Sébastien Tavenas.

18 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Approximate Polynomial Satisfiability is in the Counting Hierarchy

The Approximate polynomial satisfiability problem (APS), introduced by Guo, Saxena, and Sinhababu (CCC 2018), asks whether the zero vector lies in the Zariski closure of the image of a given polynomial map. Specifically, for a field $k$ with algebraic closure~$K$, the problem asks whether $\boldsymbol 0 \in\overline{\boldsymbol f(K^n)}$ for a polynomial map $\boldsymbol f=(f_1,\ldots,f_m)$ with $f_i\in k[X_1,\ldots,X_n]$. APS is a natural topological analogue of Hilbert's Nullstellensatz, namely the question of whether a given system of polynomial equations has a common zero. APS captures several problems in algebraic complexity, including border rank, hitting sets for border classes, and null-cone membership; it is known to be NP-hard and in PSPACE. We show that APS lies in the Counting Hierarchy (CH) over both the rationals and finite fields, substantially improving the known PSPACE upper bound. Our proof builds on a recent breakthrough due to Andrews, Garg, and Schost (FOCS 2026) on deciding Hilbert's Nullstellensatz in CH. As a corollary, our result improves the complexity of certifying hitting sets for border classes from PSPACE to CH. We also give a polynomial-time reduction of Hilbert's Nullstellensatz to APS, valid in any characteristic. In characteristic zero, we give a reduction of APS to the decision problem for the existential theory of real closed fields. Overall, our results place approximate polynomial satisfiability closer in complexity to exact polynomial feasibility and as a byproduct give improved complexity bounds for several problems arising in approximative complexity.

cs.CC↗

arXiv2025

On Closure Properties of Read-Once Oblivious Algebraic Branching Programs

We investigate the closure properties of read-once oblivious Algebraic Branching Programs (roABPs) under various natural algebraic operations and prove the following. - Non-closure under factoring: There is a sequence of explicit polynomials $(f_n(x_1,\ldots, x_n))_n$ that have $\mathsf{poly}(n)$-sized roABPs such that some irreducible factor of $f_n$ does not have roABPs of superpolynomial size in any order. - Non-closure under powering: There is a sequence of polynomials $(f_n(x_1,\ldots, x_n))_n$ with $\mathsf{poly}(n)$-sized roABPs such that any super-constant power of $f_n$ does not have roABPs of polynomial size in any order (and $f_n^n$ requires exponential size in any order). - Non-closure under symmetric compositions: There are symmetric polynomials $(f_n(e_1,\ldots, e_n))_n$ that have roABPs of polynomial size such that $f_n(x_1,\ldots, x_n)$ do not have roABPs of subexponential size. (Here, $e_1,\ldots, e_n$ denote the elementary symmetric polynomials in $n$ variables.) These results should be viewed in light of known results on models such as algebraic circuits, (general) algebraic branching programs, formulas and constant-depth circuits, all of which are known to be closed under these operations. To prove non-closure under factoring, we construct hard polynomials based on expander graphs using gadgets that lift their hardness from sparse polynomials to roABPs. For symmetric compositions, we show that the circulant polynomial requires roABPs of exponential size in every variable order.

cs.CC↗

arXiv2025

The Algebraic Cost of a Boolean Sum

It is a well-known fact that the permanent polynomial is complete for the complexity class VNP, and it is largely suspected that the determinant does not share this property, despite its similar expression. We study the question of why the VNP-completeness proof of the permanent fails for the determinant. We isolate three fundamental properties that are sufficient to prove a polynomial sequence is VNP-hard, of which two are shared by both the permanent and the determinant. We proceed to show that the permanent satisfies the third property, which we refer to as the ``cost of a boolean sum," while the determinant does not, showcasing the fundamental difference between the polynomial families. We further note that this differentiation also applies in the border complexity setting and that our results apply for counting complexity.

cs.CC↗

arXiv2024

Improved fewnomial upper bounds from Wronskians and dessins d'enfant

We use Grothendieck's dessins d'enfant to show that if $P$ and $Q$ are two real polynomials, any real function of the form $x^α(1-x)^β P - Q$, has at most $°P +°Q + 2$ roots in the interval $]0,~1[$. As a consequence, we obtain an upper bound on the number of positive solutions to a real polynomial system $f=g=0$ in two variables where $f$ has three monomials terms, and $g$ has $t$ terms. The approach we adopt for tackling this Fewnomial bound relies on the theory of Wronskians, which was used in Koiran et.\ al.\ (J.\ Symb.\ Comput., 2015) for producing the first upper bound which is polynomial in $t$.

math.AG↗

arXiv2024

On the complexity of Client-Waiter and Waiter-Client games

Positional games were introduced by Hales and Jewett in 1963, and their study became more popular after Erdos and Selfridge's first result on their connection to Ramsey theory and hypergraph coloring in 1973. Several conventions of these games exist, and the most popular one, Maker-Breaker was proved to be PSPACE-complete by Schaefer in 1978. The study of their complexity then stopped for decades, until 2017 when Bonnet, Jamain, and Saffidine proved that Maker-Breaker is W[1]-complete when parameterized by the number of moves. The study was then intensified when Rahman and Watson improved Schaefer's result in 2021 by proving that the PSPACE-hardness holds for 6-uniform hypergraphs. More recently, Galliot, Gravier, and Sivignon proved that computing the winner on rank 3 hypergraphs is in P. We focus here on the Client-Waiter and the Waiter-Client conventions. Both were proved to be NP-hard by Csernenszky, Martin, and Pluhár in 2011, but neither completeness nor positive results were known for these conventions. In this paper, we complete the study of these conventions by proving that the former is PSPACE-complete, even restricted to 6-uniform hypergraphs, and by providing an FPT-algorithm for the latter, parameterized by the size of its largest edge. In particular, the winner of Waiter-Client can be computed in polynomial time in k-uniform hypergraphs for any fixed integer k. Finally, in search of finding the exact bound between the polynomial result and the hardness result, we focused on the complexity of rank 3 hypergraphs in the Client-Waiter convention. We provide an algorithm that runs in polynomial time with an oracle in NP.

math.CO↗

arXiv2024

New bounds for the number of connected components of fewnomial hypersurfaces

We prove that the number of connected components of a smooth hypersurface in the positive orthant of $\mathbb{R}^n$ defined by a real polynomial with $d + k + 1$ monomials, where $d$ is the dimension of the affine span of the exponent vectors, is smaller than or equal to $8(d+1)^{k-1} 2^{k-1 \choose 2}$, improving the previously known bounds. We refine this bound for $k = 2$ by showing that a smooth hypersurface defined by a real polynomial with $d+3$ monomials in $n$ variables has at most $\lfloor(d-1)/2\rfloor + 3$ connected components in the positive orthant of $\mathbb{R}^n$. We present an explicit polynomial in $2$ variables with $5$ monomials which defines a curve with three connected components in the positive orthant, showing that our bound is sharp for $d = 2$ (and any $n$). Our results hold for polynomials with real exponent vectors.

math.AG↗

arXiv2024

Rational and lacunary algebraic curves

We give a bound on the number $\mathcal{Z}$ of intersection points in a ball of the complex plane, between a rational curve and a lacunary algebraic curve $Q=0$. This bound depends only on the lacunarity diagram of $Q$, and in particular is uniform in the coefficients of $Q$. Our bound shows that $\mathcal{Z}=O(dm)$, where $d$ is the degree of $Q$ and $m$ is the number of its monomials.

math.AG↗

arXiv2023

Towards Optimal Depth-Reductions for Algebraic Formulas

Classical results of Brent, Kuck and Maruyama (IEEE Trans. Computers 1973) and Brent (JACM 1974) show that any algebraic formula of size s can be converted to one of depth O(log s) with only a polynomial blow-up in size. In this paper, we consider a fine-grained version of this result depending on the degree of the polynomial computed by the algebraic formula. Given a homogeneous algebraic formula of size s computing a polynomial P of degree d, we show that P can also be computed by an (unbounded fan-in) algebraic formula of depth O(log d) and size poly(s). Our proof shows that this result also holds in the highly restricted setting of monotone, non-commutative algebraic formulas. This improves on previous results in the regime when d is small (i.e., d<<s). In particular, for the setting of d=O(log s), along with a result of Raz (STOC 2010, JACM 2013), our result implies the same depth reduction even for inhomogeneous formulas. This is particularly interesting in light of recent algebraic formula lower bounds, which work precisely in this ``low-degree" and ``low-depth" setting. We also show that these results cannot be improved in the monotone setting, even for commutative formulas.

cs.CC↗

arXiv2020

On the Markov numbers: fixed numerator, denominator, and sum conjectures

The Markov numbers are the positive integer solutions of the Diophantine equation $x^2 + y^2 + z^2 = 3xyz$. Already in 1880, Markov showed that all these solutions could be generated along a binary tree. So it became quite usual (and useful) to index the Markov numbers by the rationals between 0 and 1 which stand at the same place in the Stern-Brocot binary tree. The Frobenius conjecture claims that each Markov number appears at most once in the tree. In particular, if the conjecture is true, the order of Markov numbers would establish a new strict order on the rationals. Aigner suggested three conjectures to better understand this order. The first one has already been solved for a few months. We prove that the other two conjectures are also true. Along the way, we generalize Markov numbers to any couple (p,q) of nonnegative integers (not only when they are relatively primes) and conjecture that the unicity is still true as soon as $p \leq q$. Finally, we show that the three conjectures are in fact true for this superset.

math.CO↗

arXiv2016

On the Sensitivity Conjecture for Disjunctive Normal Forms

The sensitivity conjecture of Nisan and Szegedy [CC '94] asks whether for any Boolean function $f$, the maximum sensitivity $s(f)$, is polynomially related to its block sensitivity $bs(f)$, and hence to other major complexity measures. Despite major advances in the analysis of Boolean functions over the last decade, the problem remains widely open. In this paper, we consider a restriction on the class of Boolean functions through a model of computation (DNF), and refer to the functions adhering to this restriction as admitting the Normalized Block property. We prove that for any function $f$ admitting the Normalized Block property, $bs(f) \leq 4s(f)^2$. We note that (almost) all the functions mentioned in literature that achieve a quadratic separation between sensitivity and block sensitivity admit the Normalized Block property. Recently, Gopalan et al. [ITCS '16] showed that every Boolean function $f$ is uniquely specified by its values on a Hamming ball of radius at most $2s(f)$. We extend this result and also construct examples of Boolean functions which provide the matching lower bounds.

cs.CC↗

arXiv2016

Building Efficient and Compact Data Structures for Simplicial Complexes

The Simplex Tree (ST) is a recently introduced data structure that can represent abstract simplicial complexes of any dimension and allows efficient implementation of a large range of basic operations on simplicial complexes. In this paper, we show how to optimally compress the Simplex Tree while retaining its functionalities. In addition, we propose two new data structures called the Maximal Simplex Tree (MxST) and the Simplex Array List (SAL). We analyze the compressed Simplex Tree, the Maximal Simplex Tree, and the Simplex Array List under various settings.

cs.CG↗

arXiv2015

Log-concavity and lower bounds for arithmetic circuits

One question that we investigate in this paper is, how can we build log-concave polynomials using sparse polynomials as building blocks? More precisely, let $f = \sum\_{i = 0}^d a\_i X^i \in \mathbb{R}^+[X]$ be a polynomial satisfying the log-concavity condition $a\_i^2 \textgreater{} τa\_{i-1}a\_{i+1}$ for every $i \in \{1,\ldots,d-1\},$ where $τ\textgreater{} 0$. Whenever $f$ can be written under the form $f = \sum\_{i = 1}^k \prod\_{j = 1}^m f\_{i,j}$ where the polynomials $f\_{i,j}$ have at most $t$ monomials, it is clear that $d \leq k t^m$. Assuming that the $f\_{i,j}$ have only non-negative coefficients, we improve this degree bound to $d = \mathcal O(k m^{2/3} t^{2m/3} {\rm log^{2/3}}(kt))$ if $τ\textgreater{} 1$, and to $d \leq kmt$ if $τ= d^{2d}$. This investigation has a complexity-theoretic motivation: we show that a suitable strengthening of the above results would imply a separation of the algebraic complexity classes VP and VNP. As they currently stand, these results are strong enough to provide a new example of a family of polynomials in VNP which cannot be computed by monotone arithmetic circuits of polynomial size.

cs.CC↗

arXiv2015

The complexity of Shortest Common Supersequence for inputs with no identical consecutive letters

The Shortest Common Supersequence problem (SCS for short) consists in finding a shortest common supersequence of a finite set of words on a fixed alphabet Sigma. It is well-known that its decision version denoted [SR8] in [Garey and Johnson] is NP-complete. Many variants have been studied in the literature. In this paper we settle the complexity of two such variants of SCS where inputs do not contain identical consecutive letters. We prove that those variants denoted φSCS and MSCS both have a decision version which remains NP-complete when |Σ| is at least 3. Note that it was known for MSCS when |Σ| is at least 4 [Fleisher and Woeginger] and we discuss how [Darte] states a similar result for |Σ| at least 3.

cs.DM↗

arXiv2014

On the intersection of a sparse curve and a low-degree curve: A polynomial version of the lost theorem

Consider a system of two polynomial equations in two variables: $$F(X,Y)=G(X,Y)=0$$ where $F \in \rr[X,Y]$ has degree $d \geq 1$ and $G \in \rr[X,Y]$ has $t$ monomials. We show that the system has only $O(d^3t+d^2t^3)$ real solutions when it has a finite number of real solutions. This is the first polynomial bound for this problem. In particular, the bounds coming from the theory of fewnomials are exponential in $t$, and count only nondegenerate solutions. More generally, we show that if the set of solutions is infinite, it still has at most $O(d^3t+d^2t^3)$ connected components. By contrast, the following question seems to be open: if $F$ and $G$ have at most $t$ monomials, is the number of (nondegenerate) solutions polynomial in $t$? The authors' interest for these problems was sparked by connections between lower bounds in algebraic complexity theory and upper bounds on the number of real roots of "sparse like" polynomials.

cs.CC↗

arXiv2014

A Wronskian Approach to the real τ-conjecture

According to the real τ-conjecture, the number of real roots of a sum of products of sparse polynomials should be polynomially bounded in the size of such an expression. It is known that this conjecture implies a superpolynomial lower bound on the arithmetic circuit complexity of the permanent. In this paper, we use the Wronksian determinant to give an upper bound on the number of real roots of sums of products of sparse polynomials. The proof technique is quite versatile; it can in particular be applied to some sparse geometric problems that do not originate from arithmetic circuit complexity. The paper should therefore be of interest to researchers from these two communities (complexity theory and sparse polynomial systems).

cs.CC↗

arXiv2014

Improved bounds for reduction to depth 4 and depth 3

Koiran showed that if a $n$-variate polynomial of degree $d$ (with $d=n^{O(1)}$) is computed by a circuit of size $s$, then it is also computed by a homogeneous circuit of depth four and of size $2^{O(\sqrt{d}\log(d)\log(s))}$. Using this result, Gupta, Kamath, Kayal and Saptharishi gave a $\exp(O(\sqrt{d\log(d)\log(n)\log(s)}))$ upper bound for the size of the smallest depth three circuit computing a $n$-variate polynomial of degree $d=n^{O(1)}$ given by a circuit of size $s$. We improve here Koiran's bound. Indeed, we show that if we reduce an arithmetic circuit to depth four, then the size becomes $\exp(O(\sqrt{d\log(ds)\log(n)}))$. Mimicking Gupta, Kamath, Kayal and Saptharishi's proof, it also implies the same upper bound for depth three circuits. This new bound is not far from optimal in the sense that Gupta, Kamath, Kayal and Saptharishi also showed a $2^{Ω(\sqrt{d})}$ lower bound for the size of homogeneous depth four circuits such that gates at the bottom have fan-in at most $\sqrt{d}$. Finally, we show that this last lower bound also holds if the fan-in is at least $\sqrt{d}$.

cs.CC↗

arXiv2014

A tau-conjecture for Newton polygons

One can associate to any bivariate polynomial P(X,Y) its Newton polygon. This is the convex hull of the points (i,j) such that the monomial X^i Y^j appears in P with a nonzero coefficient. We conjecture that when P is expressed as a sum of products of sparse polynomials, the number of edges of its Newton polygon is polynomially bounded in the size of such an expression. We show that this "tau-conjecture for Newton polygons," even in a weak form, implies that the permanent polynomial is not computable by polynomial size arithmetic circuits. We make the same observation for a weak version of an earlier "real tau-conjecture." Finally, we make some progress toward the tau-conjecture for Newton polygons using recent results from combinatorial geometry.

cs.CC↗

arXiv2013

Detecting wheels

A \emph{wheel} is a graph made of a cycle of length at least~4 together with a vertex that has at least three neighbors in the cycle. We prove that the problem whose instance is a graph $G$ and whose question is "does $G$ contains a wheel as an induced subgraph" is NP-complete. We also settle the complexity of several similar problems.

cs.DM↗