Abstract | ||
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We exactly characterize the average-case complexity of the polynomial-time hierarchy (PH) by the worst-case (meta-)complexity of GapMINKT
<sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">PH</sup>
, i.e., an approximation version of the problem of determining if a given string can be compressed to a short PH-oracle efficient program. Specifically, we establish the following equivalence: DistPH ⊆ AvgP ( i.e., PH is easy on average) ⇐⇒ GapMINKT
<sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">PH</sup>
∈ P. In fact, our equivalence is significantly broad: A number of statements on several fundamental notions of complexity theory, such as errorless and one-sided-error average-case complexity, sublinear-time-bounded and polynomial-time-bounded Kolmogorov complexity, and PH-computable hitting set generators, are all shown to be equivalent. Our equivalence provides fundamentally new proof techniques for analyzing average-case complexity through the lens of meta-complexity of time-bounded Kolmogorov complexity and resolves, as immediate corollaries, questions of equivalence among different notions of average-case complexity of PH: low success versus high success probabilities (i.e., a hardness amplification theorem for DistPH against uniform algorithms) and errorless versus one-sided-error average-case complexity of PH. Our results are based on a sequence of new technical results that further develops the proof techniques of the author's previous work on the non-black-box worst-case to average-case reduction and unexpected hardness results for Kolmogorov complexity (FOCS'18, CCC'20, ITCS'20, STOC'20). Among other things, we prove the following. 1) GapMINKT
<sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">NP</sup>
∈ P implies P = BPP. At the core of the proof is a new black-box hitting set generator construction whose reconstruction algorithm uses few random bits, which also improves the approximation quality of the nonblack-box worst-case to average-case reduction without using a pseudorandom generator. 2) GapMINKT
<sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">PH</sup>
∈ P implies DistPH ⊆ AvgBPP = AvgP. 3) If MINKT
<sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">PH</sup>
∈ P is easy on a 1/poly(n)-fraction of inputs, then GapMINKT
<sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">PH</sup>
∈ P. This improves the error tolerance of the previous non-black-box worst-case to average-case reduction. The full version of the paper is available on ECCC. |
Year | DOI | Venue |
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2020 | 10.1109/FOCS46700.2020.00014 | 2020 IEEE 61st Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS) |
Keywords | DocType | Volume |
average-case complexity,meta-complexity,Kolmogorov complexity,polynomial-time hierarchy,hitting set generator,hardness amplification,pseudorandomness | Conference | 27 |
ISSN | ISBN | Citations |
1523-8288 | 978-1-7281-9622-0 | 0 |
PageRank | References | Authors |
0.34 | 0 | 1 |
Name | Order | Citations | PageRank |
---|---|---|---|
Shuichi Hirahara | 1 | 3 | 7.48 |