Positivity of the symmetric group characters is as hard as the polynomial time hierarchy

DOI10.1137/1.9781611977554.CH136MaRDI QIDQ6404697zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Christian Ikenmeyer, Igor Pak, Greta Panova

Publication date 12 July 2022

Full work available at URL https://doi.org/10.1137/1.9781611977554.ch136

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Algorithms in computer science (68Wxx)

Abstract: We prove that deciding the vanishing of the character of the symmetric group is $C_{=}P$-complete. We use this hardness result to prove that the the square of the character is not contained in $$, unless the polynomial hierarchy collapses to the second level. This rules out the existence of any (unsigned) combinatorial description for the square of the characters. As a byproduct of our proof we conclude that deciding positivity of the character is $PP$-complete under many-one reductions, and hence $PH$-hard under Turing-reductions.

Cited in

(1)

• Computational complexity of counting coincidences

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