Circuit Lower Bounds for MCSP from Local Pseudorandom Generators

The Minimum Circuit Size Problem (MCSP) asks if a given truth table of a Boolean function f can be computed by a Boolean circuit of size at most theta, for a given parameter theta.

We improve several circuit lower bounds for MCSP, using pseudorandom generators (PRGs) that are local; a PRG is called local if its output bit strings, when viewed as the truth table of a Boolean function, can be computed by a Boolean circuit of small size. We get new and improved lower bounds for MCSP that almost match the best-known lower bounds against several circuit models. Specifically, we show that computing MCSP, on functions with a truth table of length N, requires

• N^{3-o(1)}-size de Morgan formulas, improving the recent N^{2-o(1)} lower bound by Hirahara and Santhanam (CCC, 2017),
• N^{2-o(1)}-size formulas over an arbitrary basis or general branching programs (no non-trivial lower bound was known for MCSP against these models), and
• 2^{Omega(N^{1/(d+2.01)})}-size depth-d AC^0 circuits, improving the superpolynomial lower bound by Allender et al. (SICOMP, 2006).

The AC^0 lower bound stated above matches the best-known AC^0 lower bound (for PARITY) up to a small additive constant in the depth. Also, for the special case of depth-2 circuits (i.e., CNFs or DNFs), we get an almost optimal lower bound of 2^{N^{1-o(1)}} for MCSP.

Joint work with Mahdi Cheraghchi, Valentine Kabanets, and Zhenjian Lu.