Hofstadter's $G$ function is recursively defined via $G(0)=0$ and then $G(n)=n-G(G(n-1))$. Following Hofstadter, a family $(F_k)$ of similar functions is obtained by varying the number $k$ of nested recursive calls in this equation. We establish here that this family is ordered pointwise: for all $k$ and $n$, $F_k(n) \le F_{k+1}(n)$. For achieving this, a detour is made via infinite morphic words generalizing the Fibonacci word. Various properties of these words are proved, concerning the lengths of substituted prefixes of these words and the counts of some specific letters in these prefixes. We also relate the limits of $\frac{1}{n}F_k(n)$ to the frequencies of letters in the considered words.
We investigate shift-invariant vectorial Boolean functions on $n$ bits that are induced from Boolean functions on $k$ bits, for $k\leq n$. We consider such functions that are not necessarily permutations, but are, in some sense, almost bijective, and their cryptographic properties. In this context, we define an almost lifting as a Boolean function for which there is an upper bound on the number of collisions of its induced functions that does not depend on $n$. We show that if a Boolean function with diameter $k$ is an almost lifting, then the maximum number of collisions of its induced functions is $2^{k-1}$ for any $n$. Moreover, we search for functions in the class of almost liftings that have good cryptographic properties and for which the non-bijectivity does not cause major security weaknesses. These functions generalize the well-known map $\chi$ used in the Keccak hash function.
We improve bounds on the degree and sparsity of Boolean functions representing the Legendre symbol as well as on the $N$th linear complexity of the Legendre sequence. We also prove similar results for both the Liouville function for integers and its analog for polynomials over $\mathbb{F}_2$, or more general for any (binary) arithmetic function which satisfies $f(2n)=-f(n)$ for $n=1,2,\ldots$
In this paper, we examine a finite element approximation of the steady $p(\cdot)$-Navier-Stokes equations ($p(\cdot)$ is variable dependent) and prove orders of convergence by assuming natural fractional regularity assumptions on the velocity vector field and the kinematic pressure. Compared to previous results, we treat the convective term and employ a more practicable discretization of the power-law index $p(\cdot)$. Numerical experiments confirm the quasi-optimality of the $\textit{a priori}$ error estimates (for the velocity) with respect to fractional regularity assumptions on the velocity vector field and the kinematic pressure.
QAC$^0$ is the class of constant-depth quantum circuits with polynomially many ancillary qubits, where Toffoli gates on arbitrarily many qubits are allowed. In this work, we show that the parity function cannot be computed in QAC$^0$, resolving a long-standing open problem in quantum circuit complexity more than twenty years old. As a result, this proves ${\rm QAC}^0 \subsetneqq {\rm QAC}_{\rm wf}^0$. We also show that any QAC circuit of depth $d$ that approximately computes parity on $n$ bits requires $2^{\widetilde{\Omega}(n^{1/d})}$ ancillary qubits, which is close to tight. This implies a similar lower bound on approximately preparing cat states using QAC circuits. Finally, we prove a quantum analog of the Linial-Mansour-Nisan theorem for QAC$^0$. This implies that, for any QAC$^0$ circuit $U$ with $a={\rm poly}(n)$ ancillary qubits, and for any $x\in\{0,1\}^n$, the correlation between $Q(x)$ and the parity function is bounded by ${1}/{2} + 2^{-\widetilde{\Omega}(n^{1/d})}$, where $Q(x)$ denotes the output of measuring the output qubit of $U|x,0^a\rangle$. All the above consequences rely on the following technical result. If $U$ is a QAC$^0$ circuit with $a={\rm poly}(n)$ ancillary qubits, then there is a distribution $\mathcal{D}$ of bounded polynomials of degree polylog$(n)$ such that with high probability, a random polynomial from $\mathcal{D}$ approximates the function $\langle x,0^a| U^\dag Z_{n+1} U |x,0^a\rangle$ for a large fraction of $x\in \{0,1\}^n$. This result is analogous to the Razborov-Smolensky result on the approximation of AC$^0$ circuits by random low-degree polynomials.
Can the $\lambda$-calculus be considered a reasonable computational model? Can we use it for measuring the time $\textit{and}$ space consumption of algorithms? While the literature contains positive answers about time, much less is known about space. This paper presents a new reasonable space cost model for the $\lambda$-calculus, based on a variant over the Krivine abstract machine. For the first time, this cost model is able to accommodate logarithmic space. Moreover, we study the time behavior of our machine and show how to transport our results to the call-by-value $\lambda$-calculus.
We consider the problem of counting the copies of a length-$k$ pattern $\sigma$ in a sequence $f \colon [n] \to \mathbb{R}$, where a copy is a subset of indices $i_1 < \ldots < i_k \in [n]$ such that $f(i_j) < f(i_\ell)$ if and only if $\sigma(j) < \sigma(\ell)$. This problem is motivated by a range of connections and applications in ranking, nonparametric statistics, combinatorics, and fine-grained complexity, especially when $k$ is a small fixed constant. Recent advances have significantly improved our understanding of counting and detecting patterns. Guillemot and Marx [2014] demonstrated that the detection variant is solvable in $O(n)$ time for any fixed $k$. Their proof has laid the foundations for the discovery of the twin-width, a concept that has notably advanced parameterized complexity in recent years. Counting, in contrast, is harder: it has a conditional lower bound of $n^{\Omega(k / \log k)}$ [Berendsohn, Kozma, and Marx 2019] and is expected to be polynomially harder than detection as early as $k = 4$, given its equivalence to counting $4$-cycles in graphs [Dudek and Gawrychowski, 2020]. In this work, we design a deterministic near-linear time $(1+\varepsilon)$-approximation algorithm for counting $\sigma$-copies in $f$ for all $k \leq 5$. Combined with the conditional lower bound for $k=4$, this establishes the first known separation between approximate and exact algorithms for pattern counting. Interestingly, our algorithm leverages the Birg\'e decomposition -- a sublinear tool for monotone distributions widely used in distribution testing -- which, to our knowledge, has not been applied in a pattern counting context before.
In decision-making, maxitive functions are used for worst-case and best-case evaluations. Maxitivity gives rise to a rich structure that is well-studied in the context of the pointwise order. In this article, we investigate maxitivity with respect to general preorders and provide a representation theorem for such functionals. The results are illustrated for different stochastic orders in the literature, including the usual stochastic order, the increasing convex/concave order, and the dispersive order.
We prove that the number of partitions of the hypercube ${\bf Z}_q^n$ into $q^m$ subcubes of dimension $n-m$ each for fixed $q$, $m$ and growing $n$ is asymptotically equal to $n^{(q^m-1)/(q-1)}$. For the proof, we introduce the operation of the bang of a star matrix and demonstrate that any star matrix, except for a fractal, is expandable under some bang, whereas a fractal remains to be a fractal under any bang.
The problem of identifying the satisfiability threshold of random $3$-SAT formulas has received a lot of attention during the last decades and has inspired the study of other threshold phenomena in random combinatorial structures. The classical assumption in this line of research is that, for a given set of $n$ Boolean variables, each clause is drawn uniformly at random among all sets of three literals from these variables, independently from other clauses. Here, we keep the uniform distribution of each clause, but deviate significantly from the independence assumption and consider richer families of probability distributions. For integer parameters $n$, $m$, and $k$, we denote by $\DistFamily_k(n,m)$ the family of probability distributions that produce formulas with $m$ clauses, each selected uniformly at random from all sets of three literals from the $n$ variables, so that the clauses are $k$-wise independent. Our aim is to make general statements about the satisfiability or unsatisfiability of formulas produced by distributions in $\DistFamily_k(n,m)$ for different values of the parameters $n$, $m$, and $k$.
We develop two novel couplings between general pure-jump L\'evy processes in $\R^d$ and apply them to obtain upper bounds on the rate of convergence in an appropriate Wasserstein distance on the path space for a wide class of L\'evy processes attracted to a multidimensional stable process in the small-time regime. We also establish general lower bounds based on certain universal properties of slowly varying functions and the relationship between the Wasserstein and Toscani--Fourier distances of the marginals. Our upper and lower bounds typically have matching rates. In particular, the rate of convergence is polynomial for the domain of normal attraction and slower than a slowly varying function for the domain of non-normal attraction.