We investigate the complexity of depth-3 threshold circuits with majority gates at the output, possibly negated AND gates at level two, and MODm gates at level one. We show that the fan-in of the AND gates can be reduced to O(log n) in the case where m is unbounded, and to a constant in the case where m is constant. We then use these upper bounds to derive exponential lower bounds for this class of circuits. In the unbounded m case, this yields a new proof of a lower bound of Grolmusz; in the constant m case, our result sharpens his lower bound. In addition, we prove an exponential lower bound if OR gates are also permitted on level two and m is a constant prime power. 1 Introduction About ten years ago, Furst, Saxe and Sipser [FSS] and Ajtai [Aj] showed that polynomialsize AC 0 circuits could not compute the parity function. It was hoped that this seminal result would be the first in a series of lower bounds for increasingly larger classes of circuits and that this would lead to th...

We examine the spectra of boolean functions obtained as the sign of a real polynomial of degree d. A tight lower bound on various norms of the lower d levels of the function's Fourier transform is established. The result is applied to derive best possible lower bounds on the influences of variables on linear threshold functions. Some conjectures are posed concerning upper and lower bounds on influences of variables in higher order threshold functions.

We prove the first time-space tradeoffs for counting the number of solutions to an NP problem modulo small integers, and also improve upon known time-space tradeoffs for Sat. Let m> 0 be an integer, and define MODm-Sat to be the problem of determining if a given Boolean formula has exactly km satisfying assignments, for some integer k. We show for all primes p except for possibly one of them, and for all c < 2cos(π/7) ≈ 1.801, there is a d> 0 such that MODp-Sat is not solvable in n c time and n d space by general algorithms. That is, there is at most one prime p that does not satisfy the tradeoff. We prove that the same limitation holds for Sat and MOD6-Sat, as well as MODm-Sat for any composite m that is not a prime power. Our main tool is a general method for rapidly simulating deterministic computations with restricted space, by counting the number of solutions to NP predicates modulo integers. The simulation converts an ordinary algorithm into a “canonical ” one that consumes roughly the same amount of time and space, yet canonical algorithms have nice properties suitable for counting.

We observe that many important computational problems in NC 1 share a simple self-reducibility property. We then show that, for any problem A having this self-reducibility property, A has polynomial size TC 0 circuits if and only if it has TC 0 circuits of size n 1+ɛ for every ɛ>0 (counting the number of wires in a circuit as the size of the circuit). As an example of what this observation yields, consider the Boolean Formula Evaluation problem (BFE), which is complete for NC 1 and has the self-reducibility property. It follows from a lower bound of Impagliazzo, Paturi, and Saks, that BFE requires depth d TC 0 circuits of size n 1+ɛd. If one were able to improve this lower bound to show that there is some constant ɛ>0 such that every TC 0 circuit family recognizing BFE has size n 1+ɛ, then it would follow that TC 0 ̸ = NC 1. We show that proving lower bounds of the form n 1+ɛ is not ruled out by the Natural Proof framework of Razborov and Rudich and hence there is currently no known barrier for separating classes such as ACC 0,TC 0 and NC 1 via existing “natural ” approaches to proving circuit lower bounds. We also show that problems with small uniform constant-depth circuits have algorithms that simultaneously have small space and time bounds. We then make use of known time-space tradeoff lower bounds to show that SAT requires uniform depth d TC 0 and AC 0 [6] circuits of size n 1+c for some constant c depending on d. 1

Abstract. We consider an extension of first-order logic by modular quantifiers of a fixed modulus q. Drawing on collapse results from finite model theory and techniques of finite semigroup theory, we show that if the only available numerical predicate is addition, then sentences in this logic cannot define the set of bit strings in which the number of 1’s is divisible by a prime p that does not divide q. More generally, we completely characterize the regular languages definable in this logic. The corresponding statement, with addition replaced by arbitrary numerical predicates, is equivalent to the conjectured separation of the circuit complexity class ACC from NC 1. Thus our theorem can be viewed as proving a highly uniform version of the conjecture. 1

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The class ACC consists of circuit families with constant depth over unbounded fan-in AND, OR, NOT, and MODm gates, where m> 1 is an arbitrary constant. We prove: • NTIME[2 n] does not have non-uniform ACC circuits of polynomial size. The size lower bound can be slightly strengthened to quasi-polynomials and other less natural functions. • ENP, the class of languages recognized in 2O(n) time with an NP oracle, doesn’t have non-uniform ACC circuits of 2no(1) size. The lower bound gives an exponential size-depth tradeoff: for every d there is a δ> 0 such that ENP doesn’t have depth-d ACC circuits of size 2nδ. Previously, it was not known whether EXP NP had depth-3 polynomial size circuits made out of only MOD6 gates. The high-level strategy is to design faster algorithms for the circuit satisfiability problem over ACC circuits, then prove that such algorithms entail the above lower bounds. The algorithm combines known properties of ACC with fast rectangular matrix multiplication and dynamic programming, while the second step requires a subtle strengthening of the author’s prior work [STOC’10]. Supported by the Josef Raviv Memorial Fellowship.

We study the computational complexity of solving equations and of determining the satisfiability of programs over a fixed finite monoid. We partially answer an open problem of [4] by exhibiting quasi-polynomial time algorithms for a subclass of solvable non-nilpotent groups and relate this question to a natural circuit complexity conjecture. In the special case when M is aperiodic, we show that PROGRAM SATISFIABILITY is in P when the monoid belongs to the variety DA and is NP-complete otherwise. In contrast, we give an example of an aperiodic outside DA for which EQUATION SATISFIABILITY is computable in polynomial time and discuss the relative complexity of the two problems. We also study the closure properties of classes for which these problems belong to P and the extent to which these fail to form algebraic varieties.

The notion of a p-variety arises in the algebraic approach to Boolean circuit complexity. It has great signi cance, since many known and conjectured lower bounds on circuits are equivalent to the assertion that certain classes of semigroups form p-varieties. In this paper, we prove that semigroups of dot-depth one form a pvariety. This example has the following implication: if a Boolean combination of 1 formulas, using arbitrary numerical predicates, de nes a regular language, one can then nd an equivalent 1 formula all of whose numerical predicates are regular.

We show that the result of Barrington, Straubing and Thérien [5] provides, as a direct corollary, an exponential lower bound for the size of depth-two MOD 6 circuits computing the AND function. This problem was solved, in a more general way, by Krause and Waack [8]. We point out that all known lower bounds rely on the special form of the MOD 6 gate occurring at the bottom of the circuits, so that in fact, proving a lower bound for "general" MOD 6 circuits of depth two is still an open question.