Shrinkage under Random Projections, and Cubic Formula Lower Bounds for $\mathsf{AC}^0$

TL;DR

This paper extends H {a}stad's formula shrinkage results to a broader class of random restrictions and projections, leading to improved lower bounds for the size of formulas computing explicit functions in 0, and verifies the KRW conjecture for certain inner functions.

Contribution

It generalizes the shrinkage results to random projections, enabling cubic lower bounds for 0 formulas and proving the KRW conjecture for functions with tight Khrapchenko bounds.

Findings

Extended shrinkage results to random projections.

Established 0 formula size lower bounds of 0(n^3).

Verified the KRW conjecture for functions with tight Khrapchenko bounds.

Abstract

$\newcommand{\ACz}{\mathbf{AC}^0}$ H\r{a}stad showed that any De Morgan formula (composed of AND, OR and NOT gates) shrinks by a factor of $\tilde{O}(p^{2})$ under a random restriction that leaves each variable alive independently with probability $p$ [SICOMP, 1998]. Using this result, he gave an $\widetilde{\Omega}(n^{3})$ formula size lower bound for the Andreev function, which, up to lower order improvements, remains the state-of-the-art lower bound for any explicit function. In this paper, we extend the shrinkage result of H\r{a}stad to hold under a far wider family of random restrictions and their generalization -- random projections. Based on our shrinkage results, we obtain an $\widetilde{\Omega}(n^{3})$ formula size lower bound for an explicit function computable in $\ACz$. This improves upon the best known formula size lower bounds for $\ACz$, that were only quadratic prior to our work. In addition, we prove that the KRW conjecture [Karchmer et al., Computational Complexity 5(3/4), 1995] holds for inner functions for which the unweighted quantum adversary bound is tight. In particular, this holds for inner functions with a tight Khrapchenko bound. Our random projections are tailor-made to the function's structure so that the function maintains structure even under projection -- using such projections is necessary, as standard random restrictions simplify $\ACz$ circuits. In contrast, we show that any De Morgan formula shrinks by a quadratic factor under our random projections, allowing us to prove the cubic lower bound. Our proof techniques build on H\r{a}stad's proof for the simpler case of balanced formulas. This allows for a significantly simpler proof at the cost of slightly worse parameters. As such, when specialized to the case of $p$-random restrictions, our proof can be used as an exposition of H\r{a}stad's result.