A New Approach to the Sensitivity Conjecture

DOI10.1145/2688073.2688096MaRDI QIDQ2989036zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors J. Gilmer, Michal Koucký, Michael Saks

Publication date 19 May 2017

Published in Proceedings of the 2015 Conference on Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1511.07729

zbMATH Keywords

communication complexitydecision treesdegree of Boolean functionssensitivity conjecture

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Boolean functions (06E30) Modes of computation (nondeterministic, parallel, interactive, probabilistic, etc.) (68Q10) Computational difficulty of problems (lower bounds, completeness, difficulty of approximation, etc.) (68Q17) Applications of game theory (91A80)

Abstract: One of the major outstanding foundational problems about boolean functions is the sensitivity conjecture, which (in one of its many forms) asserts that the degree of a boolean function (i.e. the minimum degree of a real polynomial that interpolates the function) is bounded above by some fixed power of its sensitivity (which is the maximum vertex degree of the graph defined on the inputs where two inputs are adjacent if they differ in exactly one coordinate and their function values are different). We propose an attack on the sensitivity conjecture in terms of a novel two-player communication game. A lower bound of the form $n^{Omega(1)}$ on the cost of this game would imply the sensitivity conjecture. To investigate the problem of bounding the cost of the game, three natural (stronger) variants of the question are considered. For two of these variants, protocols are presented that show that the hoped for lower bound does not hold. These protocols satisfy a certain monotonicity property, and (in contrast to the situation for the two variants) we show that the cost of any monotone protocol satisfies a strong lower bound. There is an easy upper bound of $sqrtn$ on the cost of the game. We also improve slightly on this upper bound.

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Cited in

(13)

• The equivalence of two problems on the cube
• The average sensitivity of bounded-depth formulas
• Induced subgraphs of hypercubes and a proof of the sensitivity conjecture
• Alternation, sparsity and sensitivity: bounds and exponential gaps
• New sensitivity analysis subordinated to a contrast
• The sensitivity question under some restrained conditions
• Low-sensitivity functions from unambiguous certificates
• Sensitivity conjecture and log-rank conjecture for functions with small alternating numbers
• Communication lower bounds via critical block sensitivity
• A communication game related to the sensitivity conjecture
• A tighter relation between sensitivity complexity and certificate complexity
• Sensitivity of symmetric Boolean functions
• Inducing sensitivity on hyperspaces

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