Houjun Liu

Two Statements About Uniformity

\(\text{BPP} \subseteq p / poly\)

Remember the advice-taking TM formulation of circuits.

Now, a language \(L \in \text{BPP}\) if \(\exists\) a polytime TM \(M\) such that:

  • \(x \in L\) implies \(P\qty [M\qty(x, v) \text{ accepts}] \geq \frac{2}{3}\)
  • \(x \not\in L\) implies \(P\qty [M\qty(x, v) \text{rejects}] \geq \frac{2}{3}\)

Intuition: we want to use \(r\) as advice. But, we need a “random” advice for each \(x\) which we don’t have. But; consider the following parameterization of BPP: we notice that if we have \(\frac{1}{3}\) chance of “bad” advice, we know that we can bump the failure down by trying a more, trending towards \(2^{-O\qty(k)}\). Using \(O\qty(k)\), by the union bound, we know at least one advice is good for all input \(x\).

If \(\text{SAT} \in p / poly\), then polynomial hierarchy collapses to the second level; that is pi2=sigma2

Suppose \(\text{SAT} \in p / poly\), so \(\exists\) a polysize circuit family:

\begin{equation} \qty {C_{n}}_{n \in \mathbb{N}} \text{ solving SAT} \end{equation}

preliminaries 1: satisfying assignments

Recall that SAT has a poly-time search-to-decision reduction—suppose \(\text{SAT} \in P\), there is a poly-time truing machine \(M\) such that given \(\phi\), outputs the actual satisfying assignment. The same thing works for circuits: there exists a poly-time transformation using circuits such that, given:

\begin{equation} | \phi | = n \end{equation}

it outputs: either reject or an actual satisfying assignment (through a multi-output circuit).

preliminaries 2: \(\pi_{2} \text{SAT}\)

This is \(\pi_{2}\) complete:

\begin{equation} \forall x \in \qty {0,1}^{n}, \exists y \in \qty {0,1}^{n} \varphi\qty(0,1) =1 \end{equation}

using our condition, let’s now describe a \(\Sigma_{2}\) algorithm that decides \(\pi_{2} \text{SAT}\)

Recall by the first preliminary and the given, we have a self-certifying circuit family in p/poly (that runs in polynomial size (circuits)). We desire to build a poly time TM \(A\) such that:

\begin{equation} \exists w \in \qty {0,1}^{\text{poly}\qty(n)} \forall x \in \qty {0,1}^{n} A\qty(w, x) =1 \end{equation}