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Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science

Direct Products in Communication Complexity

Mark Braverman, Anup Rao, Omri Weinstein, Amir Yehudayoff

Published Oct 1, 2013• 71 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We give exponentially small upper bounds on the success probability for computing the direct product of any function over any distribution using a communication protocol. Let suc(μ, f, C) denote the maximum success probability of a 2-party communication protocol for computing the boolean function f(x, y) with C bits of communication, when the inputs (x, y) are drawn from the distribution μ. Let μnbe the product distribution on n inputs and fndenote the function that computes n copies of f on these inputs. We prove that if T log3/2T ≪ (C - 1)√n and suc(μ, f, C)n, fn, T) ≤ exp(-Ω(n)). When μ is a product distribution, we prove a nearly optimal result: as long as T log2T ≪ Cn, we must have suc(μn, fn, T) ≤ exp(-Ω(n)).

DOI
10.1109/focs.2013.85

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We give exponentially small upper bounds on the success probability for computing the direct product of any function over any distribution using a communication protocol. Let suc(μ, f, C) denote the maximum success probability of a 2-party communication protocol for computing the boolean function f(x, y) with C bits of communication, when the inputs (x, y) are drawn from the distribution μ. Let μnbe the product distribution on n inputs and fndenote the function that computes n copies of f on these inputs. We prove that if T log3/2T ≪ (C - 1)√n and suc(μ, f, C)n, fn, T) ≤ exp(-Ω(n)). When μ is a product distribution, we prove a nearly optimal result: as long as T log2T ≪ Cn, we must have suc(μn, fn, T) ≤ exp(-Ω(n)).
The "direct product problem" is a fundamental question in complexity theory which seeks to understand how the difficulty of computing a function on each of k independent inputs scales with k. We prove the following direct product theorem (DPT) for query complexity: if every T-query algorithm has success probability at most 1 - ε in computing the Boolean function f on input distribution μ, then for α ≤ 1, every αεTk-query algorithm has success probability at most (2αε(1 - ε))kin computing the fc-fold direct product f⊗kcorrectly on k independent inputs from μ. In light of examples due to Shaltiel, this statement gives an essentially optimal tradeoff between the query bound and the error probability. Using this DPT, we show that for an absolute constant α >; 0, the worst-case success probability of any αR2(f)k-query randomized algorithm for f⊗kfalls exponentially with k. The best previous statement of this type, due to Klauck, Spalek, and de Wolf, required a query bound of O(bs(f)k). Our proof technique involves defining and analyzing a collec tion of martingales associated with an algorithm attempting to solve f⊗k. Our method is quite general and yields a new XOR lemma and threshold DPT for the query model, as well as DPTs for the query complexity of learning tasks, search problems, and tasks involving interaction with dynamic entities. We also give a version of our DPT in which decision tree size is the resource of interest.
We show two new direct product results in two different models of communication complexity. Our first result is in the one-way public-coin model. Let f ⊆ X × Y × Z be a relation and e > 0 be a constant. Let R1,pube(f) represent the communication complexity of f, with worst-case error e in this model. We show that if for computing fk (k independent copies of f) in this model, o(k c R1, pub1/3(f)) communication is used, then the success is exponentially small in k. We show a new tight characterization of communication complexity in this model which strengthens the tight characterization shown in Jain et al. [2008]. We use this new characterization to show our direct product result and this characterization may also be of independent interest.Our second direct product result is in the model of two-way public-coin communication complexity. We show a direct product result for all relations in this model in terms of a new complexity measure that we define. Our new measure is a generalization to nonproduct distributions, of the two-way product subdistribution bound of Jain et al. [2008]. Our direct product result therefore generalizes to nonproduct distributions, their direct product result in terms of the two-way product subdistribution bound. As an application of our new direct product result, we reproduce (via completely different arguments) strong direct product result for the set-disjointness problem which was previously shown by Klauck [2010]. We show this by proving that our new complexity measure gives a tight lower bound of Ω(n) for the set-disjointness problem on n-bit inputs (this strengthens the linear lower bound on the rectangle/corruption bound for set-disjointness shown by Razborov [1992]). In addition, we show that many previously known direct product results in this model are uniformly implied and often strengthened by our result.
We show two new direct product results in two different models of communication complexity. Our first result is in the one-way public-coin model. Let f ⊆ X × Y × Z be a relation and ϵ > 0 be a constant. Let R 1,pub ϵ ( f ) represent the communication complexity of f , with worst-case error ϵ in this model. We show that if for computing f k ( k independent copies of f ) in this model, o ( k ċ R 1, pub 1/3 ( f )) communication is used, then the success is exponentially small in k . We show a new tight characterization of communication complexity in this model which strengthens the tight characterization shown in Jain et al. [2008]. We use this new characterization to show our direct product result and this characterization may also be of independent interest. Our second direct product result is in the model of two-way public-coin communication complexity. We show a direct product result for all relations in this model in terms of a new complexity measure that we define. Our new measure is a generalization to nonproduct distributions, of the two-way product subdistribution bound of Jain et al. [2008]. Our direct product result therefore generalizes to nonproduct distributions, their direct product result in terms of the two-way product subdistribution bound. As an application of our new direct product result, we reproduce (via completely different arguments) strong direct product result for the set-disjointness problem which was previously shown by Klauck [2010]. We show this by proving that our new complexity measure gives a tight lower bound of Ω( n ) for the set-disjointness problem on n -bit inputs (this strengthens the linear lower bound on the rectangle/corruption bound for set-disjointness shown by Razborov [1992]). In addition, we show that many previously known direct product results in this model are uniformly implied and often strengthened by our result.
We prove two classes of lower bounds on the communication complexity of information-theoretically secure multiparty computation. The first lower bound applies to perfect passive secure multiparty computation in the standard model with n = 2t+1 parties of which t are corrupted. We show a lower bound that applies to secure evaluation of any function, assuming that each party can choose to learn or not learn the output. Specifically, we show that there is a function H^* such that for any protocol that evaluates y_i = b_i ⋅ f(x₁,...,x_n) with perfect passive security (where b_i is a private boolean input), the total communication must be at least 1/2 ∑_{i = 1}ⁿ H_f^*(x_i) bits of information. The second lower bound applies to the perfect maliciously secure setting with n = 3t+1 parties. We show that for any n and all large enough S, there exists a reactive functionality F_S taking an S-bit string as input (and with short output) such that any protocol implementing F_S with perfect malicious security must communicate Ω(nS) bits. Since the functionalities we study can be implemented with linear size circuits, the result can equivalently be stated as follows: for any n and all large enough g ∈ ℕ there exists a reactive functionality F_C doing computation specified by a Boolean circuit C with g gates, where any perfectly secure protocol implementing F_C must communicate Ω(n g) bits. The results easily extends to constructing similar functionalities defined over any fixed finite field. Using known techniques, we also show an upper bound that matches the lower bound up to a constant factor (existing upper bounds are a factor lg n off for Boolean circuits). Both results also extend to the case where the threshold t is suboptimal. Namely if n = kt+s the bound is weakened by a factor O(s), which corresponds to known optimizations via packed secret-sharing.
We give a direct product theorem for the entanglement-assisted interactive quantum communication complexity in terms of the quantum partition bound for product distributions. The quantum partition or efficiency bound is a lower bound on communication complexity, a non-distributional version of which was introduced by Laplante, Lerays and Roland (2012). For a two-input boolean function, the best result for interactive quantum communication complexity known previously was due to Sherstov (2018), who showed a direct product theorem in terms of the generalized discrepancy. While there is no direct relationship between the maximum distributional quantum partition bound for product distributions, and the generalized discrepancy method, unlike Sherstov's result, our result works for two-input functions or relations whose outputs are non-boolean as well. As an application of our result, we show that it is possible to do device-independent quantum key distribution (DIQKD) without the assumption that devices do not leak any information after inputs are provided to them. We analyze the DIQKD protocol given by Jain, Miller and Shi (2020), and show that when the protocol is carried out with devices that are compatible with several copies of the Magic Square game, it is possible to extract a linear (in the number of copies of the game) amount of key from it, even in the presence of a linear amount of leakage. Our security proof is parallel, i.e., the honest parties can enter all their inputs into their devices at once, and works for a leakage model that is arbitrarily interactive, i.e., the devices of the honest parties Alice and Bob can exchange information with each other and with the eavesdropper Eve in any number of rounds, as long as the total number of bits or qubits communicated is bounded.