A nearly optimal lower bound on the approximate degree of AC^0

DOI10.1137/17M1161737MaRDI QIDQ5117375zbMATHOpenAlexFDO

Authors Mark Bun, Justin Thaler

Publication date 25 August 2020

Published in SIAM Journal on Computing (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.05784

zbMATH Keywords

Boolean functionsecret-sharing schemeapproximate degreeconstant-depth circuitcertificate complexityquantum communication complexity

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Computational difficulty of problems (lower bounds, completeness, difficulty of approximation, etc.) (68Q17) Complexity classes (hierarchies, relations among complexity classes, etc.) (68Q15) Authentication, digital signatures and secret sharing (94A62) Networks and circuits as models of computation; circuit complexity (68Q06) Communication complexity, information complexity (68Q11)

Abstract: The approximate degree of a Boolean function $fcolon{-1,1}^{n}ightarrow-1,1$ is the least degree of a real polynomial that approximates $f$ pointwise to error at most $1/3$. We introduce a generic method for increasing the approximate degree of a given function, while preserving its computability by constant-depth circuits. Specifically, we show how to transform any Boolean function $f$ with approximate degree $d$ into a function $F$ on $O(ncdotoperatornamepolylog(n))$ variables with approximate degree at least $D=Omega(n^{1/3}cdot{d}^{2/3})$. In particular, if $d=n^{1-Omega(1)}$, then $D$ is polynomially larger than $d$. Moreover, if $f$ is computed by a polynomial-size Boolean circuit of constant depth, then so is $F$. By recursively applying our transformation, for any constant $delta>0$ we exhibit an AC${}^0$ function of approximate degree $Omega(n^{1-delta})$. This improves over the best previous lower bound of $Omega(n^{2/3})$ due to Aaronson and Shi (J. ACM 2004), and nearly matches the trivial upper bound of $n$ that holds for any function. Our lower bounds also apply to (quasipolynomial-size) DNFs of polylogarithmic width. We describe several applications of these results. We give: * For any constant $delta>0$, an $Omega(n^{1-delta})$ lower bound on the quantum communication complexity of a function in AC${}^0$. * A Boolean function $f$ with approximate degree at least $C(f{)}^{2-o(1)}$, where $C(f)$ is the certificate complexity of $f$. This separation is optimal up to the $o(1)$ term in the exponent. * Improved secret sharing schemes with reconstruction procedures in AC${}^0$.

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Cited in

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