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1. Proof Complexity Lower Bounds from Algebraic Circuit Complexity

   https://doi.org/10.4086/toc.2021.v017a010  

   Forbes, Michael A.; Shpilka, Amir; Tzameret, Iddo; Wigderson, Avi (January 2021, Theory of Computing)

   Raz, Ran (Ed.)

   We give upper and lower bounds on the power of subsystems of the Ideal Proof System (IPS), the algebraic proof system recently proposed by Grochow and Pitassi, where the circuits comprising the proof come from various restricted algebraic circuit classes. This mimics an established research direction in the boolean setting for subsystems of Extended Frege proofs whose lines are circuits from restricted boolean circuit classes. Essentially all of the subsystems considered in this paper can simulate the well-studied Nullstellensatz proof system, and prior to this work there were no known lower bounds when measuring proof size by the algebraic complexity of the polynomials (except with respect to degree, or to sparsity). Our main contributions are two general methods of converting certain algebraic lower bounds into proof complexity ones. Both require stronger arithmetic lower bounds than common, which should hold not for a specific polynomial but for a whole family defined by it. These may be likened to some of the methods by which Boolean circuit lower bounds are turned into related proof-complexity ones, especially the "feasible interpolation" technique. We establish algebraic lower bounds of these forms for several explicit polynomials, against a variety of classes, and infer the relevant proof complexity bounds. These yield separations between IPS subsystems, which we complement by simulations to create a partial structure theory for IPS systems. Our first method is a functional lower bound, a notion of Grigoriev and Razborov, which is a function f' from n-bit strings to a field, such that any polynomial f agreeing with f' on the boolean cube requires large algebraic circuit complexity. We develop functional lower bounds for a variety of circuit classes (sparse polynomials, depth-3 powering formulas, read-once algebraic branching programs and multilinear formulas) where f'(x) equals 1/p(x) for a constant-degree polynomial p depending on the relevant circuit class. We believe these lower bounds are of independent interest in algebraic complexity, and show that they also imply lower bounds for the size of the corresponding IPS refutations for proving that the relevant polynomial p is non-zero over the boolean cube. In particular, we show super-polynomial lower bounds for refuting variants of the subset-sum axioms in these IPS subsystems. Our second method is to give lower bounds for multiples, that is, to give explicit polynomials whose all (non-zero) multiples require large algebraic circuit complexity. By extending known techniques, we give lower bounds for multiples for various restricted circuit classes such sparse polynomials, sums of powers of low-degree polynomials, and roABPs. These results are of independent interest, as we argue that lower bounds for multiples is the correct notion for instantiating the algebraic hardness versus randomness paradigm of Kabanets and Impagliazzo. Further, we show how such lower bounds for multiples extend to lower bounds for refutations in the corresponding IPS subsystem. 

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2. Principal Specialization of Dual Characters of Flagged Weyl Modules

   https://doi.org/10.37236/10460  

   Mészáros, Karola; St. Dizier, Avery; Tanjaya, Arthur (October 2021, The Electronic Journal of Combinatorics)

   Schur polynomials are special cases of Schubert polynomials, which in turn are special cases of dual characters of flagged Weyl modules. The principal specialization of Schur and Schubert polynomials has a long history, with Macdonald famously expressing the principal specialization of any Schubert polynomial in terms of reduced words. We prove a lower bound on the principal specialization of dual characters of flagged Weyl modules. Our result yields an alternative proof of a conjecture of Stanley about  the principal specialization of Schubert polynomials, originally proved by Weigandt. 

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3. On correlation bounds against polynomials Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs):38th Computational Complexity Conference (CCC 2023)

   https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.CCC.2023.3  

   Ivanov, Peter; Pavlovic, Liam; Viola, Emanuele (January 2023, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik)

   Ta-Shma, Amnon (Ed.)

   We study the fundamental challenge of exhibiting explicit functions that have small correlation with low-degree polynomials over 𝔽₂. Our main contributions include: 1) In STOC 2020, CHHLZ introduced a new technique to prove correlation bounds. Using their technique they established new correlation bounds for low-degree polynomials. They conjectured that their technique generalizes to higher degree polynomials as well. We give a counterexample to their conjecture, in fact ruling out weaker parameters and showing what they prove is essentially the best possible. 2) We propose a new approach for proving correlation bounds with the central "mod functions," consisting of two steps: (I) the polynomials that maximize correlation are symmetric and (II) symmetric polynomials have small correlation. Contrary to related results in the literature, we conjecture that (I) is true. We argue this approach is not affected by existing "barrier results." 3) We prove our conjecture for quadratic polynomials. Specifically, we determine the maximum possible correlation between quadratic polynomials modulo 2 and the functions (x_1,… ,x_n) → z^{∑ x_i} for any z on the complex unit circle, and show that it is achieved by symmetric polynomials. To obtain our results we develop a new proof technique: we express correlation in terms of directional derivatives and analyze it by slowly restricting the direction. 4) We make partial progress on the conjecture for cubic polynomials, in particular proving tight correlation bounds for cubic polynomials whose degree-3 part is symmetric. 

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4. An Area-Depth Symmetric $q,t$-Catalan Polynomial

   https://doi.org/10.37236/10743  

   Pappe, Joseph; Paul, Digjoy; Schilling, Anne (April 2022, The Electronic Journal of Combinatorics)

   We define two symmetric $q,t$-Catalan polynomials in terms of the area and depth statistic and in terms of the dinv and dinv of depth statistics. We prove symmetry using an involution on plane trees. The same involution proves symmetry of the Tutte polynomials. We also provide a combinatorial proof of a remark by Garsia et al. regarding parking functions and the number of connected graphs on a fixed number of vertices. 

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5. Polynomials from Combinatorial -theory

   https://doi.org/10.4153/S0008414X19000464  

   Monical, Cara; Pechenik, Oliver; Searles, Dominic (February 2021, Canadian Journal of Mathematics)

   null (Ed.)

   Abstract We introduce two new bases of the ring of polynomials and study their relations to known bases. The first basis is the quasi-Lascoux basis, which is simultaneously both a $$K$$ -theoretic deformation of the quasi-key basis and also a lift of the $$K$$ -analogue of the quasi-Schur basis from quasi-symmetric polynomials to general polynomials. We give positive expansions of this quasi-Lascoux basis into the glide and Lascoux atom bases, as well as a positive expansion of the Lascoux basis into the quasi-Lascoux basis. As a special case, these expansions give the first proof that the $$K$$ -analogues of quasi-Schur polynomials expand positively in multifundamental quasi-symmetric polynomials of T. Lam and P. Pylyavskyy. The second new basis is the kaon basis, a $$K$$ -theoretic deformation of the fundamental particle basis. We give positive expansions of the glide and Lascoux atom bases into this kaon basis. Throughout, we explore how the relationships among these $$K$$ -analogues mirror the relationships among their cohomological counterparts. We make several “alternating sum” conjectures that are suggestive of Euler characteristic calculations. 

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