Lower Bounds for Dynamic Transitive Closure, Planar Point Location, and Parentheses Matching

Abstract

We give a number of new lower bounds in the cell probe model<br />with logarithmic cell size, which entails the same bounds on the random access computer with logarithmic word size and unit cost operations. We study the signed prefix sum problem: given a string of length n of zeroes and signed ones, compute the sum of its ith prefix during updates. We show a<br />lower bound of Omega(log n/log log n) time per operations, even if the prefix sums are bounded by log n/log log n during all updates. We also show that if the update time is bounded by the product of the worst-case update time and the<br />answer to the query, then the update time must be Omega(sqrt(log n/ log log n)).<br /> These results allow us to prove lower bounds for a variety of seemingly unrelated<br />dynamic problems. We give a lower bound for the dynamic planar point location in monotone subdivisions of <br />Omega(log n/ log log n) per operation. We give<br />a lower bound for the dynamic transitive closure problem on upward planar graphs with one source and one sink of <br />Omega(log n/(log logn)^2) per operation. We give a lower bound of Omega(sqrt(log n/log log n)) for the dynamic membership problem of any Dyck language with two or more letters. This implies the same<br />lower bound for the dynamic word problem for the free group with k generators. We also give lower bounds for the dynamic prefix majority and prefix equality problems.