TY - GEN
T1 - Is it possible to improve Yao's XOR lemma using reductions that exploit the efficiency of their oracle?
AU - Shaltiel, Ronen
N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2020 Schloss Dagstuhl- Leibniz-Zentrum fur Informatik GmbH, Dagstuhl Publishing. All rights reserved.
PY - 2020/8/1
Y1 - 2020/8/1
N2 - Yao's XOR lemma states that for every function f: {0, 1}k → {0, 1}, if f has hardness 2/3 for P/poly (meaning that for every circuit C in P/poly, Pr[C(X) = f(X)] ≤ 2/3 on a uniform input X), then the task of computing f(X1) ⊕... ⊕ f(Xt) for sufficiently large t has hardness 12 + ε for P/poly. Known proofs of this lemma cannot achieve ε = kω1(1), and even for ε = k1, we do not know how to replace P/poly by AC0[parity] (the class of constant depth circuits with the gates {and,or,not,parity} of unbounded fan-in). Recently, Grinberg, Shaltiel and Viola (FOCS 2018) (building on a sequence of earlier works) showed that these limitations cannot be circumvented by black-box reductions. Namely, by reductions Red(·) that given oracle access to a function D that violates the conclusion of Yao's XOR lemma, implement a circuit that violates the assumption of Yao's XOR lemma. There are a few known reductions in the related literature on worst-case to average case reductions that are non-black box. Specifically, the reductions of Gutfreund, Shaltiel and Ta Shma (Computational Complexity 2007) and Hirahara (FOCS 2018)) are “class reductions” that are only guaranteed to succeed when given oracle access to an oracle D from some efficient class of algorithms. These works seem to circumvent some black-box impossibility results. In this paper we extend the previous limitations of Grinberg, Shaltiel and Viola to class reductions, giving evidence that class reductions cannot yield the desired improvements in Yao's XOR lemma. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first limitation on reductions for hardness amplification that applies to class reductions. Our technique imitates the previous lower bounds for black-box reductions, replacing the inefficient oracle used in that proof, with an efficient one that is based on limited independence, and developing tools to deal with the technical difficulties that arise following this replacement.
AB - Yao's XOR lemma states that for every function f: {0, 1}k → {0, 1}, if f has hardness 2/3 for P/poly (meaning that for every circuit C in P/poly, Pr[C(X) = f(X)] ≤ 2/3 on a uniform input X), then the task of computing f(X1) ⊕... ⊕ f(Xt) for sufficiently large t has hardness 12 + ε for P/poly. Known proofs of this lemma cannot achieve ε = kω1(1), and even for ε = k1, we do not know how to replace P/poly by AC0[parity] (the class of constant depth circuits with the gates {and,or,not,parity} of unbounded fan-in). Recently, Grinberg, Shaltiel and Viola (FOCS 2018) (building on a sequence of earlier works) showed that these limitations cannot be circumvented by black-box reductions. Namely, by reductions Red(·) that given oracle access to a function D that violates the conclusion of Yao's XOR lemma, implement a circuit that violates the assumption of Yao's XOR lemma. There are a few known reductions in the related literature on worst-case to average case reductions that are non-black box. Specifically, the reductions of Gutfreund, Shaltiel and Ta Shma (Computational Complexity 2007) and Hirahara (FOCS 2018)) are “class reductions” that are only guaranteed to succeed when given oracle access to an oracle D from some efficient class of algorithms. These works seem to circumvent some black-box impossibility results. In this paper we extend the previous limitations of Grinberg, Shaltiel and Viola to class reductions, giving evidence that class reductions cannot yield the desired improvements in Yao's XOR lemma. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first limitation on reductions for hardness amplification that applies to class reductions. Our technique imitates the previous lower bounds for black-box reductions, replacing the inefficient oracle used in that proof, with an efficient one that is based on limited independence, and developing tools to deal with the technical difficulties that arise following this replacement.
KW - Black-box reductions
KW - Hardness amplification
KW - Yao's XOR lemma
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85091322019&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.4230/LIPIcs.APPROX/RANDOM.2020.10
DO - 10.4230/LIPIcs.APPROX/RANDOM.2020.10
M3 - Conference contribution
T3 - Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics, LIPIcs
BT - Approximation, Randomization, and Combinatorial Optimization. Algorithms and Techniques, APPROX/RANDOM 2020
A2 - Byrka, Jaroslaw
A2 - Meka, Raghu
PB - Schloss Dagstuhl- Leibniz-Zentrum fur Informatik GmbH, Dagstuhl Publishing
T2 - 23rd International Conference on Approximation Algorithms for Combinatorial Optimization Problems and 24th International Conference on Randomization and Computation, APPROX/RANDOM 2020
Y2 - 17 August 2020 through 19 August 2020
ER -