. We investigate the distribution of nonuniform complexities in uniform complexity classes. We prove that almost every problem decidable in exponential space has essentially maximum circuit-size and space-bounded Kolmogorov complexity almost everywhere. (The circuit-size lower bound actually exceeds, and thereby strengthens, the Shannon 2 n n lower bound for almost every problem, with no computability constraint.) In exponential time complexity classes, we prove that the strongest relativizable lower bounds hold almost everywhere for almost all problems. Finally, we show that infinite pseudorandom sequences have high nonuniform complexity almost everywhere. The results are unified by a new, more powerful formulation of the underlying measure theory, based on uniform systems of density functions, and by the introduction of a new nonuniform complexity measure, the selective Kolmogorov complexity. This research was supported in part by NSF Grants CCR-8809238 and CCR-9157382 and in ...

This paper is dedicated to the memory of Ronald V. Book, 1937-1997.

. We show that if a self-reducible set has polynomial-size circuits, then it is low for the probabilistic class ZPP(NP). As a consequence we get a deeper collapse of the polynomial-time hierarchy PH to ZPP(NP) under the assumption that NP has polynomial-size circuits. This improves on the well-known result of Karp, Lipton, and Sipser (1980) stating a collapse of PH to its second level \Sigma P 2 under the same assumption. As a further consequence, we derive new collapse consequences under the assumption that complexity classes like UP, FewP, and C=P have polynomial-size circuits. Finally, we investigate the circuit-size complexity of several language classes. In particular, we show that for every fixed polynomial s, there is a set in ZPP(NP) which does not have O(s(n))-size circuits. Key words. polynomial-size circuits, advice classes, lowness, randomized computation AMS subject classifications. 03D10, 03D15, 68Q10, 68Q15 1. Introduction. The question of whether intractable sets ca...

The main theorem of this paper is that, for every real number ff ! 1 (e.g., ff = 0:99), only a measure 0 subset of the languages decidable in exponential time are P n ff \Gammatt -reducible to languages that are not exponentially dense. Thus every P n ff \Gammatt -hard language for E is exponentially dense. This strengthens Watanabe's 1987 result, that every P O(log n)\Gammatt -hard language for E is exponentially dense. The combinatorial technique used here, the sequentially most frequent query selection, also gives a new, simpler proof of Watanabe's result. The main theorem also has implications for the structure of NP under strong hypotheses. Ogiwara and Watanabe (1991) have shown that the hypothesis P 6= NP implies that every P btt -hard language for NP is non-sparse (i.e., not polynomially sparse). Their technique does not appear to allow significant relaxation of either the query bound or the sparseness criterion. It is shown here that a stronger hypothesis--- na...

help us decide where and how to put our efforts into solving We show that MAEXP, the exponential time version of problems in complexity theory. It is still true that virtually the Merlin-Arthur class, does not have polynomial size cir- all of the theorems in computational complexity theory that cuits. This significantly improves the previous known result have reasonable relativizations do relativize (see [For94]). due to Kannan since we furthermore show that our result But we do have a small number of exceptions that arise does not relativize. This is the first separation result in com- from the area of interactive proofs. These results have preplexity theory that does not relativize. As a corollary to our viously always taken the form of collapses such as IP= separation result we also obtain that PEXP, the exponen- PSPACE [LFKN92, Sha92], MIP=NEXP [BFL91] and tial time version of PP is not in P=poly. PCP(O(1);O(logn))=NP [ALM+92]. In this paper we give the first reasonable nonrel-1

Several recent nonrelativizing results in the area of interactive proofs have caused many people to review the importance of relativization. In this paper we take a look at how complexity theorists use and misuse oracle results. We pay special attention to the new interactive proof systems and program checking results and try to understand why they do not relativize. We give some new results that may help us to understand these questions better.

In this paper we extend a key result of Nisan and Wigderson [17] to the nondeterministic setting: for all ff ? 0 we show that if there is a language in E = DTIME(2 O(n) ) that is hard to approximate by nondeterministic circuits of size 2 ffn , then there is a pseudorandom generator that can be used to derandomize BP \Delta NP (in symbols, BP \Delta NP = NP). By applying this extension we are able to answer some open questions in [14] regarding the derandomization of the classes BP \Delta \Sigma P k and BP \Delta \Theta P k under plausible measure theoretic assumptions. As a consequence, if \Theta P 2 does not have p-measure 0, then AM " coAM is low for \Theta P 2 . Thus, in this case, the graph isomorphism problem is low for \Theta P 2 . By using the NisanWigderson design of a pseudorandom generator we unconditionally show the inclusion MA ` ZPP NP and that MA " coMA is low for ZPP NP . 1 Introduction In recent years, following the development of resource-bounded meas...

The 1980's saw rapid and exciting development of techniques for proving lower bounds in circuit complexity. This pace has slowed recently, and there has even been work indicating that quite different proof techniques must be employed to advance beyond the current frontier of circuit lower bounds. Although this has engendered pessimism in some quarters, there have in fact been many positive developments in the past few years showing that significant progress is possible on many fronts. This paper is a (necessarily incomplete) survey of the state of circuit complexity as we await the dawn of the new millennium.

We study the complexity of the circuit minimization problem: given the truth table of a Boolean function f and a parameter s, decide whether f can be realized by a Boolean circuit of size at most s. We argue why this problem is unlikely to be in P (or even in P=poly) by giving a number of surprising consequences of such an assumption. We also argue that proving this problem to be NP-complete (if it is indeed true) would imply proving strong circuit lower bounds for the class E, which appears beyond the currently known techniques. Keywords: hard Boolean functions, derandomization, natural properties, NP-completeness. 1 Introduction An n-variable Boolean function f n : f0; 1g n ! f0; 1g can be given by either its truth table of size 2 n , or a Boolean circuit whose size may be significantly smaller than 2 n . It is well known that most Boolean functions on n variables have circuit complexity at least 2 n =n [Sha49], but so far no family of sufficiently hard functions has ...

Several problems concerning superpolynomial size circuits and superpolynomialtime advice classes are investigated. First we consider the implications of NP (and other fun- damental complexity classes) having circuits slightly bigger than polynomial. We prove that if such circuits exist, for example if NP has n logn size circuits, the exponen- tial hierarchy collapses to the second level. Next we con- sider the consequences of the bottom levels of the exponen- tial hierarchy being contained in small advice classes. Again various collapses result. For example, if EXP NP is contained in EXP=poly then EXP NP = EXP . Finally, we consider the alternating 2 polylog -time hierarchy. The properties of this hierarchy underlie many of the previous results. 1 Introduction In research from the early 1980's to the present, there has been considerable interest in the implications of efficient reductions of NP-complete sets (and other hard sets) to sparse sets. To a certain extent th...