Succinct representations of Boolean functions and the Circuit-SAT problem

Romani, Shadab (2016) Succinct representations of Boolean functions and the Circuit-SAT problem. Masters thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

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Abstract

We study the question whether there is a computational advantage in deciding properties of Boolean functions given a succinct description of the function (such as a Boolean circuit) as opposed to black-box access to the function. We argue that a significant computational advantage for a large class of properties implies a non-trivial algorithm for the Circuit Satisfiability (Circuit-SAT) problem. In particular, we show that if there is a property with strong black-box lower bounds yet decidable in BPP, which also has a highly sensitive instance computable by a small circuit, then there is a non-uniform sub-exponential algorithm for the Circuit-SAT problem. Additionally, we analyze variants of this question for other computational models.

Item Type: Thesis (Masters)
URI: http://research.library.mun.ca/id/eprint/12159
Item ID: 12159
Additional Information: Includes bibliographical references (pages 44-47).
Keywords: Boolean Circuits, Circuit Satisfiability, Rice's Theorem, Complexity Theory
Department(s): Science, Faculty of > Computer Science
Date: April 2016
Date Type: Submission
Library of Congress Subject Heading: Computable functions; Computational complexity; Turing machines; Algebra, Boolean

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