The Connes Embedding Problem (CEP) is a problem in the theory of tracial von Neumann algebras and asks whether or not every tracial von Neumann algebra embeds into an ultrapower of the hyperfinite II$_1$ factor. The CEP has had interactions with a wide variety of areas of mathematics, including C*-algebra theory, geometric group theory, free probability, and noncommutative real algebraic geometry (to

We propose a new idea for public key quantum money. In the abstract sense, our bills are encoded as a joint eigenstate of a fixed system of commuting unitary operators. We perform some basic analysis of this black box system and show that it is resistant to black box attacks. In order to instantiate this protocol, one needs to find a cryptographically complicated system of computable, commuting, unitary

We prove the existence of Reed-Solomon codes of any desired rate $R \in (0,1)$ that are combinatorially list-decodable up to a radius approaching $1-R$, which is the information-theoretic limit. This is established by starting with the full-length $[q,k]_q$ Reed-Solomon code over a field $\mathbb F_q$ that is polynomially larger than the desired dimension $k$, and "puncturing" it by including $k/R$

We revisit a classical crossword filling puzzle which already appeared in Garey\&Jonhson's book. We are given a grid with $n$ vertical and horizontal slots and a dictionary with $m$ words and are asked to place words from the dictionary in the slots so that shared cells are consistent. We attempt to pinpoint the source of intractability of this problem by taking into account the structure of the grid

Graph representations have gained importance in almost every scientific field, ranging from mathematics, biology, social sciences and physics to computer science. In contrast to other data formats, graphs propose the possibility to model relations between entities. Together with the continuously rising amount of available data, graphs therefore open up a wide range of modeling capabilities for theoretical

The Curry-Howard correspondence is often called the proofs-as-programs result. I offer a generalization of this result, something which may be called machines as programs. Utilizing this insight, I introduce two new Turing Machines called "Ceiling Machines." The formal ingredients of these two machines are nearly identical. But there are crucial differences, splitting the two into a "Higher Ceiling

Vertex Integrity is a graph measure which sits squarely between two more well-studied notions, namely vertex cover and tree-depth, and that has recently gained attention as a structural graph parameter. In this paper we investigate the algorithmic trade-offs involved with this parameter from the point of view of algorithmic meta-theorems for First-Order (FO) and Monadic Second Order (MSO) logic. Our

Given a fixed finite metric space $(V,\mu)$, the {\em minimum $0$-extension problem}, denoted as ${\tt 0\mbox{-}Ext}[\mu]$, is equivalent to the following optimization problem: minimize function of the form $\min\limits_{x\in V^n} \sum_i f_i(x_i) + \sum_{ij}c_{ij}\mu(x_i,x_j)$ where $c_{ij},c_{vi}$ are given nonnegative costs and $f_i:V\rightarrow \mathbb R$ are functions given by $f_i(x_i)=\sum_{v\in

In this paper, we study the computational complexity of the commutative determinant polynomial computed by a class of set-multilinear circuits which we call regular set-multilinear circuits. Regular set-multilinear circuits are commutative circuits with a restriction on the order in which they can compute polynomials. A regular circuit can be seen as the commutative analogue of the ordered circuit

In this paper, we study the computational complexity of the quadratic unconstrained binary optimization (QUBO) problem under the functional problem FP^NP categorization. We focus on three sub-classes: (1) When all coefficients are integers QUBO is FP^NP-complete. When every coefficient is an integer lower bounded by a constant k, QUBO is FP^NP[log]-complete. (3) When coefficients can only be in the

We use results from communication complexity, both new and old ones, to prove lower bounds for problems on unambiguous finite automata (UFAs). We show: (1) Complementing UFAs with $n$ states requires in general at least $n^{\tilde{\Omega}(\log n)}$ states, improving on a bound by Raskin. (2) There are languages $L_n$ such that both $L_n$ and its complement are recognized by NFAs with $n$ states but

In this paper, we give a Nivat-like characterization for weighted alternating automata over commutative semirings (WAFA). To this purpose we prove that weighted alternating can be characterized as the concatenation of weighted finite tree automata (WFTA) and a specific class of tree homomorphism. We show that the class of series recognized by weighted alternating automata is closed under inverses of

The notion of separating automata was introduced by Bojanczyk and Czerwinski for understanding the first quasipolynomial time algorithm for parity games. In this paper we show that separating automata is a powerful tool for constructing algorithms solving games with combinations of objectives. We construct two new algorithms: the first for disjunctions of parity and mean payoff objectives, matching

Answer Set Programming has separately been extended with constraints, to the streaming domain, and with capabilities to reason over the quantities associated with answer sets. We propose the introduction and analysis of a general framework that incorporates all three directions of extension by exploiting the strengths of Here-and-There Logic and Weighted Logic.

We obtain computational hardness results for f-vectors of polytopes by exhibiting reductions of the problems DIVISOR and SEMI-PRIME TESTABILITY to problems on f-vectors of polytopes. Further, we show that the corresponding problems for f-vectors of simplicial polytopes are polytime solvable. The regime where we prove this computational difference (conditioned on standard conjectures on the density

For relational structures A, B of the same signature, the Promise Constraint Satisfaction Problem PCSP(A,B) asks whether a given input structure maps homomorphically to A or does not even map to B. We are promised that the input satisfies exactly one of these two cases. If there exists a structure C with homomorphisms $A\to C\to B$, then PCSP(A,B) reduces naturally to CSP(C). To the best of our knowledge

Fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) enables a simple, attractive framework for secure search. Compared to other secure search systems, no costly setup procedure is necessary; it is sufficient for the client merely to upload the encrypted database to the server. Confidentiality is provided because the server works only on the encrypted query and records. While the search functionality is enabled by the

We prove two results that shed new light on the monotone complexity of the spanning tree polynomial, a classic polynomial in algebraic complexity and beyond. First, we show that the spanning tree polynomials having $n$ variables and defined over constant-degree expander graphs, have monotone arithmetic complexity $2^{\Omega(n)}$. This yields the first strongly exponential lower bound on the monotone

I offer a case that quantum query complexity still has loads of enticing and fundamental open problems -- from relativized QMA versus QCMA and BQP versus IP, to time/space tradeoffs for collision and element distinctness, to polynomial degree versus quantum query complexity for partial functions, to the Unitary Synthesis Problem and more.

Financial networks model a set of financial institutions (firms) interconnected by obligations. Recent work has introduced to this model a class of obligations called credit default swaps, a certain kind of financial derivatives. The main computational challenge for such systems is known as the clearing problem, which is to determine which firms are in default and to compute their exposure to systemic

One approach to make progress on the symbolic determinant identity testing (SDIT) problem is to study the structure of singular matrix spaces. After settling the non-commutative rank problem (Garg-Gurvits-Oliveira-Wigderson, Found. Comput. Math. 2020; Ivanyos-Qiao-Subrahmanyam, Comput. Complex. 2018), a natural next step is to understand singular matrix spaces whose non-commutative rank is full. At

We propose a detailed proof of the fact that the inverse of Ackermann function is computable in linear time.

A matching is a set of edges in a graph with no common endpoint. A matching $M$ is called acyclic if the induced subgraph on the endpoints of the edges in $M$ is acyclic. Given a graph $G$ and an integer $k$, Acyclic Matching Problem seeks for an acyclic matching of size $k$ in $G$. The problem is known to be NP-complete. In this paper, we investigate the complexity of the problem in different aspects

We prove three results on the dimension structure of complexity classes. 1. The Point-to-Set Principle, which has recently been used to prove several new theorems in fractal geometry, has resource-bounded instances. These instances characterize the resource-bounded dimension of a set $X$ of languages in terms of the relativized resource-bounded dimensions of the individual elements of $X$, provided

The Maximum Likelihood Decoding Problem (MLD) and the Multivariate Quadratic System Problem (MQ) are known to be NP-hard. In this paper we present a polynomial-time reduction from any instance of MLD to an instance of MQ, and viceversa.

The concept of nimbers--a.k.a. Grundy-values or nim-values--is fundamental to combinatorial game theory. Nimbers provide a complete characterization of strategic interactions among impartial games in their disjunctive sums as well as the winnability. In this paper, we initiate a study of nimber-preserving reductions among impartial games. These reductions enhance the winnability-preserving reductions

Suffix trees are an important data structure at the core of optimal solutions to many fundamental string problems, such as exact pattern matching, longest common substring, matching statistics, and longest repeated substring. Recent lines of research focused on extending some of these problems to vertex-labeled graphs, although using ad-hoc approaches which in some cases do not generalize to all input

In 1992 Mansour proved that every size-$s$ DNF formula is Fourier-concentrated on $s^{O(\log\log s)}$ coefficients. We improve this to $s^{O(\log\log k)}$ where $k$ is the read number of the DNF. Since $k$ is always at most $s$, our bound matches Mansour's for all DNFs and strengthens it for small-read ones. The previous best bound for read-$k$ DNFs was $s^{O(k^{3/2})}$. For $k$ up to $\tilde{\Theta}(\log\log

QBF solvers implementing the QCDCL paradigm are powerful algorithms that successfully tackle many computationally complex applications. However, our theoretical understanding of the strength and limitations of these QCDCL solvers is very limited. In this paper we suggest to formally model QCDCL solvers as proof systems. We define different policies that can be used for decision heuristics and unit

We study the problem of minimizing the number of critical simplices from the point of view of inapproximability and parameterized complexity. We first show inapproximability of Min-Morse Matching within a factor of $2^{\log^{(1-\epsilon)}n}$. Our second result shows that Min-Morse Matching is ${\bf W{[P]}}$-hard with respect to the standard parameter. Next, we show that Min-Morse Matching with standard

We present an algorithm for strongly refuting smoothed instances of all Boolean CSPs. The smoothed model is a hybrid between worst and average-case input models, where the input is an arbitrary instance of the CSP with only the negation patterns of the literals re-randomized with some small probability. For an $n$-variable smoothed instance of a $k$-arity CSP, our algorithm runs in $n^{O(\ell)}$ time

$\newcommand{\Z}{\mathbb{Z}}$ We show improved fine-grained hardness of two key lattice problems in the $\ell_p$ norm: Bounded Distance Decoding to within an $\alpha$ factor of the minimum distance ($\mathrm{BDD}_{p, \alpha}$) and the (decisional) $\gamma$-approximate Shortest Vector Problem ($\mathrm{SVP}_{p,\gamma}$), assuming variants of the Gap (Strong) Exponential Time Hypothesis (Gap-(S)ETH)

Point feature labeling is a classical problem in cartography and GIS that has been extensively studied for geospatial point data. At the same time, word clouds are a popular visualization tool to show the most important words in text data which has also been extended to visualize geospatial data (Buchin et al. PacificVis 2016). In this paper, we study a hybrid visualization, which combines aspects

In the oracle identification problem we have oracle access to bits of an unknown string $x$ of length $n$, with the promise that it belongs to a known set $C\subseteq\{0,1\}^n$. The goal is to identify $x$ using as few queries to the oracle as possible. We develop a quantum query algorithm for this problem with query complexity $O\left(\sqrt{\frac{n\log M }{\log(n/\log M)+1}}\right)$, where $M$ is

We introduce a new notion of influence for symmetric convex sets over Gaussian space, which we term "convex influence". We show that this new notion of influence shares many of the familiar properties of influences of variables for monotone Boolean functions $f: \{\pm1\}^n \to \{\pm1\}.$ Our main results for convex influences give Gaussian space analogues of many important results on influences for

Following a recently considered generalisation of linear equations to unordered-data vectors and to ordered-data vectors, we perform a further generalisation to k-element-sets-of-unordered-data vectors. These generalised equations naturally appear in the analysis of vector addition systems (or Petri nets) extended so that each token carries a set of unordered data. We show that nonnegative-integer

In this note we present a simplified analysis of the quantum and classical complexity of the $k$-XOR Forrelation problem (introduced in the paper of Girish, Raz and Zhan) by a stochastic interpretation of the Forrelation distribution.

For general input automata, there exist regular constraint languages such that asking if a given input automaton admits a synchronizing word in the constraint language is PSPACE-complete or NP-complete. Here, we investigate this problem for commutative automata over an arbitrary alphabet and automata with simple idempotents over a binary alphabet as input automata. The latter class contains, for example

We are interested in embedding trees T with maximum degree at most four in a rectangular grid, such that the vertices of T correspond to grid points, while edges of T correspond to non-intersecting straight segments of the grid lines. Such embeddings are called straight models. While each edge is represented by a straight segment, a path of T is represented in the model by the union of the segments

In this work, we prove a hypercontractive inequality for matrix-valued functions defined over large alphabets, generalizing a result of Ben-Aroya, Regev, de Wolf (FOCS'08) for the Boolean alphabet. To obtain our result we generalize the powerful $2$-uniform convexity inequality for trace norms of Ball, Carlen, Lieb (Inventiones Mathematicae'94). We give two applications of this hypercontractive inequality

In combinatorial reconfiguration, the reconfiguration problems on a vertex subset (e.g., an independent set) are well investigated. In these problems, some tokens are placed on a subset of vertices of the graph, and there are three natural reconfiguration rules called ``token sliding,'' ``token jumping,'' and ``token addition and removal''. In the context of computational complexity of puzzles, the

Deciding whether a family of disjoint axis-parallel line segments in the plane can be linked into a simple polygon (or a simple polygonal chain) by adding segments between their endpoints is NP-hard.

For some Maltsev conditions $\Sigma$ it is enough to check if a finite algebra $\mathbf A$ satisfies $\Sigma$ locally on subsets of bounded size, in order to decide, whether $\mathbf A$ satisfies $\Sigma$ (globally). This local-global property is the main known source of tractability results for deciding Maltsev conditions. In this paper we investigate the local-global property for the existence of

Reachability, distance, and matching are some of the most fundamental graph problems that have been of particular interest in dynamic complexity theory in recent years [DKMSZ18, DMVZ18, DKMTVZ20]. Reachability can be maintained with first-order update formulas, or equivalently in DynFO in general graphs with n nodes [DKMSZ18], even under O(log n/loglog n) changes per step [DMVZ18]. In the context of

Similar to the role of Markov decision processes in reinforcement learning, Stochastic Games (SGs) lay the foundation for the study of multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) and sequential agent interactions. In this paper, we derive that computing an approximate Markov Perfect Equilibrium (MPE) in a finite-state discounted Stochastic Game within the exponential precision is \textbf{PPAD}-complete

This work presents a comparison for the performance of sequential sorting algorithms under four different modes of execution, the sequential processing mode, a conventional multi-threading implementation, multi-threading with OpenMP Library and finally parallel processing on a super computer. Quick Sort algorithm was selected to run the experiments performed by this effort and the algorithm was run

We consider the problem of finding a near ground state of a $p$-spin model with Rademacher couplings by means of a low-depth circuit. As a direct extension of the authors' recent work~\cite{gamarnik2020lowFOCS}, we establish that any poly-size $n$-output circuit that produces a spin assignment with objective value within a certain constant factor of optimality, must have depth at least $\log n/(2\log\log

Satisfiability Modulo Theories (SMT) and SAT solvers are critical components in many formal software tools, primarily due to the fact that they are able to easily solve logical problem instances with millions of variables and clauses. This efficiency of solvers is in surprising contrast to the traditional complexity theory position that the problems that these solvers address are believed to be hard

Mixtures of high dimensional Gaussian distributions have been studied extensively in statistics and learning theory. While the total variation distance appears naturally in the sample complexity of distribution learning, it is analytically difficult to obtain tight lower bounds for mixtures. Exploiting a connection between total variation distance and the characteristic function of the mixture, we

Mobile Edge Learning (MEL) is a collaborative learning paradigm that features distributed training of Machine Learning (ML) models over edge devices (e.g., IoT devices). In MEL, possible coexistence of multiple learning tasks with different datasets may arise. The heterogeneity in edge devices' capabilities will require the joint optimization of the learners-orchestrator association and task allocation

We give an $n^{O(\log\log n)}$-time membership query algorithm for properly and agnostically learning decision trees under the uniform distribution over $\{\pm 1\}^n$. Even in the realizable setting, the previous fastest runtime was $n^{O(\log n)}$, a consequence of a classic algorithm of Ehrenfeucht and Haussler. Our algorithm shares similarities with practical heuristics for learning decision trees

We study several problems on geometric packing and covering with movement. Given a family $\mathcal{I}$ of $n$ intervals of $\kappa$ distinct lengths, and another interval $B$, can we pack the intervals in $\mathcal{I}$ inside $B$ (respectively, cover $B$ by the intervals in $\mathcal{I}$) by moving $\tau$ intervals and keeping the other $\sigma = n - \tau$ intervals unmoved? We show that both packing

Random subspaces $X$ of $\mathbb{R}^n$ of dimension proportional to $n$ are, with high probability, well-spread with respect to the $\ell_p$-norm (for $p \in [1,2]$). Namely, every nonzero $x \in X$ is "robustly non-sparse" in the following sense: $x$ is $\varepsilon \|x\|_p$-far in $\ell_p$-distance from all $\delta n$-sparse vectors, for positive constants $\varepsilon, \delta$ bounded away from

We investigate the complexity of the reachability problem for (deep) neural networks: does it compute valid output given some valid input? It was recently claimed that the problem is NP-complete for general neural networks and conjunctive input/output specifications. We repair some flaws in the original upper and lower bound proofs. We then show that NP-hardness already holds for restricted classes

In this paper, authors construct a new type of sequence which is named an extra-super increasing sequence, and give the definitions of the minimal super increasing sequence {a[0], ..., a[l]} and minimal extra-super increasing sequence {z[0], ...,[z]l}. Discover that there always exists a fit n which makes (z[n] / z[n-1] - a[n] / a[n-1])= PHI, where PHI is the golden ratio conjugate with a finite precision

In the 1960s, statistical physicists discovered a fascinating algorithm for counting perfect matchings in planar graphs. Valiant later showed that the same problem is #P-hard for general graphs. Since then, the algorithm for planar graphs was extended to bounded-genus graphs, to graphs excluding $K_{3,3}$ or $K_{5}$, and more generally, to any graph class excluding a fixed minor $H$ that can be drawn

A 3-SAT problem is called positive and planar if all the literals are positive and the clause-variable incidence graph (i.e., SAT graph) is planar. The NAE 3-SAT and 1-in-3-SAT are two variants of 3-SAT that remain NP-complete even when they are positive. The positive 1-in-3-SAT problem remains NP-complete under planarity constraint, but planar NAE 3-SAT is solvable in $O(n^{1.5}\log n)$ time. In this

The key transform of the REESSE1+ asymmetrical cryptosystem is Ci = (Ai * W ^ l(i)) ^ d (% M) with l(i) in Omega = {5, 7, ..., 2n + 3} for i = 1, ..., n, where l(i) is called a lever function. In this paper, the authors give a simplified key transform Ci = Ai * W ^ l(i) (% M) with a new lever function l(i) from {1, ..., n} to Omega = {+/-5, +/-6, ..., +/-(n + 4)}, where "+/-" means the selection of

Deciding whether a family of disjoint line segments in the plane can be linked into a simple polygon (or a simple polygonal chain) by adding segments between their endpoints is NP-hard.

The complexity class LOGCFL (resp., LOGDCFL) consists of all languages that are many-one reducible to context-free (resp., deterministic context-free) languages using logarithmic space. These complexity classes have been studied over five decades in connection to parallel computation since they are located between Nick's classes $\mathrm{NC}^1$ and $\mathrm{NC}^2$. In contrast, the state complexity