Abstract. We investigate the s-t-connectivity problem for directed planar graphs, which is hard for L and is contained in NL but is not known to be complete. We show that this problem is logspace-reducible to its complement, and we show that the problem of searching graphs of genus 1 reduces to the planar case. We also consider a previously-studied subclass of planar graphs known as grid graphs. We show that the directed planar s-t-connectivity problem reduces to the reachability problem for directed grid graphs. A special case of the grid-graph reachability problem where no edges are directed from right to left is known as the “acyclic grid graph reachability problem”. We show that this problem lies in the complexity class UL. 1

A grid graph has rectangularly arranged vertices with edges permitted only between orthogonally adjacent vertices. The st-connectivity principle states that it is not possible to have a red path of edges and a green path of edges which connect diagonally opposite corners of the grid graph unless the paths cross somewhere.

In this paper we show several results about monotone planar circuits. We show that monotone planar circuits of bounded width, with access to negated input variables, compute exactly the functions in non-uniform AC 0 . This provides a striking contrast to the non-planar case, where exactly NC 1 is computed. We show that the circuit value problem for monotone planar circuits, with inputs on the outer face only, can be solved in LOGDCFL ` SC, improving a LOGCFL upper bound due to Dymond and Cook. We show that for monotone planar circuits, with inputs on the outer face only, excessive depth compared to width is useless; any function computed by a monotone planar circuit of width w with inputs on the outer face can be computed by a monotone planar circuit of width O(w) and depth w O(1) . Finally, we show that monotone planar read-once circuits, with inputs on the outer face only, can be efficiently learned using membership queries. 1 Introduction In this paper, we prove a number of ...

Constant-depth arithmetic circuits have been defined and studied in [AAD97, ABL98]; these circuits yield the function classes #AC . These function classes in turn provide new characterizations of the computational power of threshold circuits, and provide a link between the circuit classes AC (where many lower bounds are known) and TC (where essentially no lower bounds are known). In this paper, we resolve several questions regarding the closure properties of #AC .

We study the complexity of the dynamic partial sum problem in the cell-probe model. We give the model access to nondeterministic queries and prove that the problem remains hard. We give the model access to the right answer as an oracle and prove that the problem remains hard. This suggests which kind of information is hard to maintain. From these results, we derive a number of lower bounds for dynamic algorithms and data structures: We prove lower bounds for dynamic algorithms for existential range queries, reachability in directed graphs, planarity testing, planar point location, incremental parsing, and fundamental data structure problems like maintaining the majority of the prefixes of a string of bits. We prove a lower bound for reachability in grid graphs in terms of the graph's width. We characterize the complexity of maintaining the value of any symmetric function on the prefixes of a bit string. Keywords. cell-probe model, partial sum, dynamic algorithm, data structure AMS subject classifications. 68Q17, 68Q10, 68Q05, 68P05

We introduce new models for dynamic computation based on the cell probe model of Fredman and Yao. We give these models access to nondeterministic queries or the right answer ±1 as an oracle. We prove that for the dynamic partial sum problem, these new powers do not help, the problem retains its lower bound of Omega (log n/ log log n). From...

We show that the st-connectivity problem for directed planar graphs can be decided in unambiguous logarithmic space. 1.

We consider the computational power of constant width polynomial size cylindrical circuits and nondeterministic branching programs. We show that every function computed by a #2 circuit can also be computed by a constant width polynomial size cylindrical nondeterministic branching program (or cylindrical circuit) and that every function computed by a constant width polynomial size cylindrical circuit belongs to ACC .

Abstract. We consider a compressed form of the word problem for finitely presented monoids, where the input consists of two compressed representations of words over the generators of a monoid M, and we ask whether these two words represent the same monoid element of M. Words are compressed using straight-line programs, i.e., context-free grammars that generate exactly one word. For several classes of finitely presented monoids we obtain completeness results for complexity classes in the range from P to EXPSPACE. As a by-product of our results on compressed word problems we obtain a fixed deterministic context-free language with a PSPACE-complete compressed membership problem. The existence of such a language was open so far. Finally, we will investigate the complexity of the compressed membership problem for various circuit complexity classes. Key words. grammar-based compression, word problems for monoids, context-free languages, complexity AMS subject classifications. 20F10, 68Q17, 68Q42

A monotone planar circuit (MPC) is a Boolean circuit that can be embedded in a plane, and that has only AND and OR gates. Yang showed that the one-input-face monotone planar circuit value problem (MPCVP) is in NC 2, and Limaye et. al. improved the bound to LogCFL. Barrington et. al. showed that evaluating monotone upward stratified circuits, a restricted version of the oneinput-face MPCVP, is in LogDCFL. In this paper, we prove that the unrestricted one-input-face MPCVP is also in LogDCFL. We also show this problem to be L-hard under quantifier free projections.