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1. The Polynomial Method Strikes Back: Tight Quantum Query Bounds via Dual Polynomials

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3188745.3188784  

   Bun, Mark; Kothari, Robin; Thaler, Justin (October 2020, Theory of computing)

   null (Ed.)

   The approximate degree of a Boolean function f is the least degree of a real polynomial that approximates f pointwise to error at most 1/3. The approximate degree of f is known to be a lower bound on the quantum query complexity of f (Beals et al., FOCS 1998 and J. ACM 2001). We find tight or nearly tight bounds on the approximate degree and quantum query complexities of several basic functions. Specifically, we show the following. k-Distinctness: For any constant k, the approximate degree and quantum query complexity of the k-distinctness function is Ω(n3/4−1/(2k)). This is nearly tight for large k, as Belovs (FOCS 2012) has shown that for any constant k, the approximate degree and quantum query complexity of k-distinctness is O(n3/4−1/(2k+2−4)). Image size testing: The approximate degree and quantum query complexity of testing the size of the image of a function [n]→[n] is Ω~(n1/2). This proves a conjecture of Ambainis et al. (SODA 2016), and it implies tight lower bounds on the approximate degree and quantum query complexity of the following natural problems. k-Junta testing: A tight Ω~(k1/2) lower bound for k-junta testing, answering the main open question of Ambainis et al. (SODA 2016). Statistical distance from uniform: A tight Ω~(n1/2) lower bound for approximating the statistical distance of a distribution from uniform, answering the main question left open by Bravyi et al. (STACS 2010 and IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory 2011). Shannon entropy: A tight Ω~(n1/2) lower bound for approximating Shannon entropy up to a certain additive constant, answering a question of Li and Wu (2017). Surjectivity: The approximate degree of the surjectivity function is Ω~(n3/4). The best prior lower bound was Ω(n2/3). Our result matches an upper bound of O~(n3/4) due to Sherstov (STOC 2018), which we reprove using different techniques. The quantum query complexity of this function is known to be Θ(n) (Beame and Machmouchi, Quantum Inf. Comput. 2012 and Sherstov, FOCS 2015). Our upper bound for surjectivity introduces new techniques for approximating Boolean functions by low-degree polynomials. Our lower bounds are proved by significantly refining techniques recently introduced by Bun and Thaler (FOCS 2017). 

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2. The Discrepancy of Shortest Paths

   https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2024.27  

   Bodwin, Greg; Deng, Chengyuan; Gao, Jie; Hoppenworth, Gary; Upadhyay, Jalaj; Wang, Chen (January 2024, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik)

   Bringmann, Karl; Grohe, Martin; Puppis, Gabriele; Svensson, Ola (Ed.)

   The hereditary discrepancy of a set system is a quantitative measure of the pseudorandom properties of the system. Roughly speaking, hereditary discrepancy measures how well one can 2-color the elements of the system so that each set contains approximately the same number of elements of each color. Hereditary discrepancy has numerous applications in computational geometry, communication complexity and derandomization. More recently, the hereditary discrepancy of the set system of shortest paths has found applications in differential privacy [Chen et al. SODA 23]. The contribution of this paper is to improve the upper and lower bounds on the hereditary discrepancy of set systems of unique shortest paths in graphs. In particular, we show that any system of unique shortest paths in an undirected weighted graph has hereditary discrepancy O(n^{1/4}), and we construct lower bound examples demonstrating that this bound is tight up to polylog n factors. Our lower bounds hold even for planar graphs and bipartite graphs, and improve a previous lower bound of Ω(n^{1/6}) obtained by applying the trace bound of Chazelle and Lvov [SoCG'00] to a classical point-line system of Erdős. As applications, we improve the lower bound on the additive error for differentially-private all pairs shortest distances from Ω(n^{1/6}) [Chen et al. SODA 23] to Ω̃(n^{1/4}), and we improve the lower bound on additive error for the differentially-private all sets range queries problem to Ω̃(n^{1/4}), which is tight up to polylog n factors [Deng et al. WADS 23]. 

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3. Sparse Bounded Hop-Spanners for Geometric Intersection Graphs

   https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.SoCG.2025.17  

   Bhore, Sujoy; Chan, Timothy M; Huang, Zhengcheng; Smorodinsky, Shakhar; Tóth, Csaba D (January 2025, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik)

   Aichholzer, Oswin; Wang, Haitao (Ed.)

   We present new results on 2- and 3-hop spanners for geometric intersection graphs. These include improved upper and lower bounds for 2- and 3-hop spanners for many geometric intersection graphs in ℝ^d. For example, we show that the intersection graph of n balls in ℝ^d admits a 2-hop spanner of size O^*(n^{3/2 - 1/(2(2⌊d/2⌋ + 1))}) and the intersection graph of n fat axis-parallel boxes in ℝ^d admits a 2-hop spanner of size O(n log^{d+1}n). Furthermore, we show that the intersection graph of general semi-algebraic objects in ℝ^d admits a 3-hop spanner of size O^*(n^{3/2 - 1/(2(2D-1))}), where D is a parameter associated with the description complexity of the objects. For such families (or more specifically, for tetrahedra in ℝ³), we provide a lower bound of Ω(n^{4/3}). For 3-hop and axis-parallel boxes in ℝ^d, we provide the upper bound O(n log ^{d-1}n) and lower bound Ω(n ({log n}/{log log n})^{d-2}). 

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4. Matchings in Low-Arboricity Graphs in the Dynamic Graph Stream Model

   https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.FSTTCS.2024.29  

   Konrad, Christian; McGregor, Andrew; Sengupta, Rik; Than, Cuong (January 2024, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik)

   Barman, Siddharth; Lasota, Sławomir (Ed.)

   We consider the problem of estimating the size of a maximum matching in low-arboricity graphs in the dynamic graph stream model. In this setting, an algorithm with limited memory makes multiple passes over a stream of edge insertions and deletions, resulting in a low-arboricity graph. Let n be the number of vertices of the input graph, and α be its arboricity. We give the following results. 1) As our main result, we give a three-pass streaming algorithm that produces an (α + 2)(1 + ε)-approximation and uses space O(ε^{-2}⋅α²⋅n^{1/2}⋅log n). This result should be contrasted with the Ω(α^{-5/2}⋅n^{1/2}) space lower bound established by [Assadi et al., SODA'17] for one-pass algorithms, showing that, for graphs of constant arboricity, the one-pass space lower bound can be achieved in three passes (up to poly-logarithmic factors). Furthermore, we obtain a two-pass algorithm that uses space O(ε^{-2}⋅α²⋅n^{3/5}⋅log n). 2) We also give a (1+ε)-approximation multi-pass algorithm, where the space used is parameterized by an upper bound on the size of a largest matching. For example, using O(log log n) passes, the space required is O(ε^{-1}⋅α²⋅k⋅log n), where k denotes an upper bound on the size of a largest matching. Finally, we define a notion of arboricity in the context of matrices. This is a natural measure of the sparsity of a matrix that is more nuanced than simply bounding the total number of nonzero entries, but less restrictive than bounding the number of nonzero entries in each row and column. For such matrices, we exploit our results on estimating matching size to present upper bounds for the problem of rank estimation in the dynamic data stream model. 

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5. Quantum algorithms and approximating polynomials for composed functions with shared inputs

   https://doi.org/10.22331/q-2021-09-16-543  

   Bun, Mark; Kothari, Robin; Thaler, Justin (September 2021, Quantum)

   We give new quantum algorithms for evaluating composed functions whose inputs may be shared between bottom-level gates. Let f be an m -bit Boolean function and consider an n -bit function F obtained by applying f to conjunctions of possibly overlapping subsets of n variables. If f has quantum query complexity Q ( f ) , we give an algorithm for evaluating F using O ~ ( Q ( f ) ⋅ n ) quantum queries. This improves on the bound of O ( Q ( f ) ⋅ n ) that follows by treating each conjunction independently, and our bound is tight for worst-case choices of f . Using completely different techniques, we prove a similar tight composition theorem for the approximate degree of f .By recursively applying our composition theorems, we obtain a nearly optimal O ~ ( n 1 − 2 − d ) upper bound on the quantum query complexity and approximate degree of linear-size depth- d AC 0 circuits. As a consequence, such circuits can be PAC learned in subexponential time, even in the challenging agnostic setting. Prior to our work, a subexponential-time algorithm was not known even for linear-size depth-3 AC 0 circuits.As an additional consequence, we show that AC 0 ∘ ⊕ circuits of depth d + 1 require size Ω ~ ( n 1 / ( 1 − 2 − d ) ) ≥ ω ( n 1 + 2 − d ) to compute the Inner Product function even on average. The previous best size lower bound was Ω ( n 1 + 4 − ( d + 1 ) ) and only held in the worst case (Cheraghchi et al., JCSS 2018). 

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