Multilinear Formulas, Maximal-Partition Discrepancy and Mixed-Sources Extractors

Abstract

We study a new method for proving lower bounds for subclasses of arithmetic circuits. Roughly speaking, the lower bound is proved by bounding the correlation between the coefficients' vector of a polynomial and the coefficients' vector of any product of two polynomials with disjoint sets of variables. We prove lower bounds for several old and new subclasses of circuits.