Lectures

For some lectures we will follow Lectures in Computational Complexity of Jin-Yi Cai (LC below), the book Computational Complexity: A Modern Approach of Sanjeev Arora and Boaz Barak (MA below), and the book Communication Complexity of Anup Rao and Amir Yehudayoff (CC below). TC denotes the Sipser book.

Date

Topic

Readings

Homework

Sep 3 Review of Turing machines; Hierarchy theorems. Sections 3.1 and 9.1 of TC
Sep 8 Polynomial hierarchy. Section 2.3 of LC
Sep 10 Oracle Turing machines; Sigma_2^P = NP^{SAT} Sections 2.4 and 2.5 of LC
Sep 15 Circuits and sparse sets; Karp–Lipton theorem Sections 4.1 and 4.2 of LC
Sep 17 Mahaney's theorem; PSPACE Section 4.3 of LC and Section 8.1 of TC
Sep 22 PSPACE = NPSPACE Sec 8.1 and 8.2 of TC
Sep 24 L, NL and coNL Sec 8.4 and 8.6 of TC
Sep 29 NL = co-NL and PSPACE-completeness Sec 8.6 and 8.3 of TC
Oct 1 NL-completeness and randomized algorithms Sec 8.5 of TC and 5.2.2 of LC
Oct 6 Amplification of RP and BPP with tail bounds Sec 5.1.1, 5.1.2, 5.1.3 and 5.4 of LC
Oct 8 BPP in \Sigma_2^P and Interactive Proof Systems Sec 5.5 of LC
Oct 13 #SAT in IP Sec 10.4 of TC
Oct 15 IP = PSPACE Sec 10.4 of TC
Oct 20 Midterm
Oct 22 PCP Theorem Sec 18.1 of MA
Oct 27 PCP Theorem Sec 18.2 of MA
Oct 29 PCP Theorem Sec 18.4 of MA
Nov 3 Academic Holiday
Nov 5 PCP Theorem Sec 18.4 of MA
Nov 10 Communication complexity Chapter 1 of CC
Nov 12 Lower bounds via monochromatic rectangles Chapter 1 of CC
Nov 17 CC vs monochromatic partitions; rank Chapter 1 and Pages 33-37 of CC
Nov 19 Randomized communication complexity Sec 2.1, 2.2 and 2.4 of Notes by Shachar Lovett
Nov 24 Academic Holiday
Nov 26 Lower bounds for disjointness Sec 4.3 of Notes by Shachar Lovett
Dec 1 Circuit depth and KW games Pages 97-99 of CC
Dec 3 Monotone circuit depth lower bounds Pages 99-101 of CC
Dec 8 TBA