In arXiv:1710.08163 a generalization of Boolean circuits to arbitrary finite algebras had been introduced and applied to sketch P versus NP-complete borderline for circuits satisfiability over algebras from congruence modular varieties. However the problem for nilpotent (which had not been shown to be NP-hard) but not supernilpotent algebras (which had been shown to be polynomial time) remained open.
In this paper we provide a broad class of examples, lying in this grey area, and show that, under the Exponential Time Hypothesis and Strong Exponential Size Hypothesis (saying that Boolean circuits need exponentially many modular counting gates to produce boolean conjunctions of any arity), satisfiability over these algebras have intermediate complexity between $Ω(2^{c\log^{h-1} n})$ and $O(2^{c\log^h n})$, where $h$ measures how much a nilpotent algebra fails to be supernilpotent. We also sketch how these examples could be used as paradigms to fill the nilpotent versus supernilpotent gap in general.
Our examples are striking in view of the natural strong connections between circuits satisfiability and Constraint Satisfaction Problem for which the dichotomy had been shown by Bulatov and Zhuk.
In recent years, finding new satisfiability algorithms for various circuit classes has been a very active line of research. Despite considerable progress, we are still far away from a definite answer on which circuit classes allow fast satisfiability algorithms. This survey takes a (far from exhaustive) look at some recent satisfiability algorithms for a range of circuit classes and high- lights common themes. A special focus is given to connections between satisfiability algorithms and circuit lower bounds. A second focus is on reductions from satisfiability algorithms to a range of polynomia…
We give a nontrivial algorithm for the satisfiability problem for cn-wire threshold circuits of depth two which is better than exhaustive search by a factor 2^{sn} where s= 1/c^{O(c^2)}. We believe that this is the first nontrivial satisfiability algorithm for cn-wire threshold circuits of depth two. The independently interesting problem of the feasibility of sparse 0-1 integer linear programs is a special case. To our knowledge, our algorithm is the first to achieve constant savings even for the special case of Integer Linear Programming. The key idea is to reduce the satisfiability problem t…
The following problem is considered. A Turing machine $M$, that accepts a string of fixed length $t$ as input, runs for a time not exceeding a fixed value $n$ and is guaranteed to produce a binary output, is given. It's required to find a string $X$ such that $M(X) = 1$ effectively in terms of $t$, $n$, the size of the alphabet of $M$ and the number of states of $M$. The problem is close to the well-known Circuit Satisfiability Problem. The difference from Circuit Satisfiability Problem is that when reduced to Circuit Satisfiability Problem, we get circuits with a rich internal structure (in p…
Satisfiability of Boolean circuits is among the most known and important problems in theoretical computer science. This problem is NP-complete in general but becomes polynomial time when restricted either to monotone gates or linear gates. We go outside Boolean realm and consider circuits built of any fixed set of gates on an arbitrary large finite domain. From the complexity point of view this is strictly connected with the problems of solving equations (or systems of equations) over finite algebras. The research reported in this work was motivated by a desire to know for which finite algebra…
$ \newcommand{\cclass}[1]{\normalfont\textsf{##1}} $We show average-case lower bounds for explicit Boolean functions against bounded-depth threshold circuits with a superlinear number of wires. We show that for each integer $d > 1$, there is a constant $\varepsilon_d > 0$ such that the Parity function on $n$ bits has correlation at most $n^{-\varepsilon_d}$ with depth-$d$ threshold circuits which have at most $n^{1+\varepsilon_d}$ wires, and the Generalized Andreev function on $n$ bits has correlation at most $\exp(-{n^{\varepsilon_d}})$ with depth-$d$ threshold circuits which have at most $n^…
For Boolean satisfiability problems, the structure of the solution space is characterized by the solution graph, where the vertices are the solutions, and two solutions are connected iff they differ in exactly one variable. In 2006, Gopalan et al. studied connectivity properties of the solution graph and related complexity issues for CSPs, motivated mainly by research on satisfiability algorithms and the satisfiability threshold. They proved dichotomies for the diameter of connected components and for the complexity of the st-connectivity question, and conjectured a trichotomy for the connecti…
We consider the problem of efficiently enumerating the satisfying assignments to $\AC^0$ circuits. We give a zero-error randomized algorithm which takes an $\AC^0$ circuit as input and constructs a set of restrictions which partition $\{0,1\}^n$ so that under each restriction the value of the circuit is constant. Let $d$ denote the depth of the circuit and $cn$ denote the number of gates. This algorithm runs in time $|C| 2^{n(1-μ_{c.d})}$ where $|C|$ is the size of the circuit for $μ_{c,d} \ge 1/\bigO[\lg c + d \lg d]^{d-1}$ with probability at least $1-2^{-n}$. As a result, we get improved ex…
We consider the weighted antimonotone and the weighted monotone satisfiability problems on normalized circuits of depth at most $t \geq 2$, abbreviated {\sc wsat$^-[t]$} and {\sc wsat$^+[t]$}, respectively. These problems model the weighted satisfiability of antimonotone and monotone propositional formulas (including weighted anitmonoone/monotone {\sc cnf-sat}) in a natural way, and serve as the canonical problems in the definition of the parameterized complexity hierarchy. We characterize the parameterized complexity of {\sc wsat$^-[t]$} and {\sc wsat$^+[t]$} with respect to the genus of the …
In connection with machine arithmetic, we are interested in systems of constraints of the form x + k \leq y + k'. Over integers, the satisfiability problem for such systems is polynomial time. The problem becomes NP complete if we restrict attention to the residues for a fixed modulus N.
We study how the complexity of modular circuits computing AND depends on the depth of the circuits and the prime factorization of the modulus they use. In particular our construction of subexponential circuits of depth 2 for AND helps us to classify (modulo Exponential Time Hypothesis) modular circuits with respect to the complexity of their satisfiability. We also study a precise correlation between this complexity and the sizes of modular circuits realizing AND. On the other hand showing that AND can be computed by a polynomial size probabilistic modular circuit of depth 2 (with O(log n) ran…
In this paper two algorithms solving circuit satisfiability problem over supernilpotent algebras are presented. The first one is deterministic and is faster than fastest previous algorithm presented by Aichinger. The second one is probabilistic with linear time complexity. Application of the former algorithm to finite groups provides time complexity that is usually lower than in previously best (given by Földvári) and application of the latter leads to corollary, that circuit satisfiability problem for group G is either tractable in probabilistic linear time if G is nilpotent or is NP-complete…
Efficient solutions to NP-complete problems would significantly benefit both science and industry. However, such problems are intractable on digital computers based on the von Neumann architecture, thus creating the need for alternative solutions to tackle such problems. Recently, a deterministic, continuous-time dynamical system (CTDS) was proposed (Nat.Phys. {\bf 7}(12), 966 (2011)) to solve a representative NP-complete problem, Boolean Satisfiability (SAT). This solver shows polynomial analog time-complexity on even the hardest benchmark $k$-SAT ($k \geq 3$) formulas, but at an energy cost …
We prove that weighted circuit satisfiability for monotone or antimonotone circuits has no fixed-parameter tractable approximation algorithm with any approximation ratio function $ρ$, unless $FPT\neq W[1]$. In particular, not having such an fpt-approximation algorithm implies that these problems have no polynomial-time approximation algorithms with ratio $ρ(OPT)$ for any nontrivial function $ρ$.
It has been known for almost three decades that many $\mathrm{NP}$-hard optimization problems can be solved in polynomial time when restricted to structures of constant treewidth. In this work we provide the first extension of such results to the quantum setting. We show that given a quantum circuit $C$ with $n$ uninitialized inputs, $\mathit{poly}(n)$ gates, and treewidth $t$, one can compute in time $(\frac{n}δ)^{\exp(O(t))}$ a classical assignment $y\in \{0,1\}^n$ that maximizes the acceptance probability of $C$ up to a $δ$ additive factor. In particular, our algorithm runs in polynomial ti…
For Boolean satisfiability problems, the structure of the solution space is characterized by the solution graph, where the vertices are the solutions, and two solutions are connected iff they differ in exactly one variable. For this implicitly defined graph, we here study the st-connectivity and connectivity problems. Building on the work of Gopalan et al. ("The Connectivity of Boolean Satisfiability: Computational and Structural Dichotomies", 2006/2009), we first investigate satisfiability problems given by CSPs, more exactly CNF(S)-formulas with constants (as considered in Schaefer's famous …
Stochastic Boolean Satisfiability (SSAT) is a logical formalism to model decision problems with uncertainty, such as Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (POMDP) for verification of probabilistic systems. SSAT, however, is limited by its descriptive power within the PSPACE complexity class. More complex problems, such as the NEXPTIME-complete Decentralized POMDP (Dec-POMDP), cannot be succinctly encoded with SSAT. To provide a logical formalism of such problems, we extend the Dependency Quantified Boolean Formula (DQBF), a representative problem in the NEXPTIME-complete class, to its s…
In this paper, we present a novel algorithm to solve the Boolean Satisfiability (SAT) problem, using noise-based logic (NBL). Contrary to what the name may suggest, NBL is not a random/fuzzy logic system. In fact, it is a completely deterministic logic system. A key property of NBL is that it allows us to apply a superposition of many input vectors to a SAT instance at the same time, circumventing a key restriction and assumption in the traditional approach to solving SAT. By exploiting the superposition property of NBL, our NBL-based SAT algorithm can determine whether an instance is SAT or n…
Aix Marseille Univ（艾克斯-马赛大学）；Université de Toulon（土伦大学）；CNRS（法国国家科学研究中心）；Université Paris Cité（巴黎西岱大学）；Leibniz Universität Hannover（汉诺威莱布尼茨大学）
We refine the complexity landscape for enumeration problems by introducing very low classes defined by using Boolean circuits as enumerators. We locate well-known enumeration problems, e.g., from graph theory, Gray code enumeration, and propositional satisfiability in our classes. In this way we obtain a framework to distinguish between the complexity of different problems known to be in $\mathbf{DelayP}$, for which a formal way of comparison was not possible to this day.
Transient chaos is an ubiquitous phenomenon characterizing the dynamics of phase space trajectories evolving towards a steady state attractor in physical systems as diverse as fluids, chemical reactions and condensed matter systems. Here we show that transient chaos also appears in the dynamics of certain efficient algorithms searching for solutions of constraint satisfaction problems that include scheduling, circuit design, routing, database problems or even Sudoku. In particular, we present a study of the emergence of hardness in Boolean satisfiability ($k$-SAT), a canonical class of constra…
The circuit equivalence problem of a finite algebra $\mathbf A$ is the computational problem of deciding whether two circuits over $\mathbf A$ define the same function or not. This problem not just generalises the equivalence problem for Boolean circuits, but is also of high interest in universal algebra, as it models the problems of checking identities in $\mathbf A$. In this paper we discuss the complexity for algebras from congruence modular varieties. A partial classification was already given by Idziak and Krzaczkowski, leaving essentially only a gap for nilpotent but not supernilpotent a…
