Holographic algorithms

Complexity theory is built fundamentally on the notion of efficient reduction among computational problems. Classical reductions involve gadgets that map solution fragments of one problem to solution fragments of another in one-to-one, or possibly one-to-many, fashion. In this paper we propose a new kind of reduction that allows for gadgets with many-to-many correspondences, in which the individual correspondences among the solution fragments can no longer be identified. Their objective may be viewed as that of generating interference patterns among these solution fragments so as to conserve their sum. We show that such holographic reductions provide a method of translating a combinatorial problem to finite systems of polynomial equations with integer coefficients such that the number of solutions of the combinatorial problem can be counted in polynomial time if one of the systems has a solution over the complex numbers. We derive polynomial time algorithms in this way for a number of problems for which only exponential time algorithms were known before. General questions about complexity classes can also be formulated. If the method is applied to a # P-complete problem, then polynomial systems can be obtained, the solvability of which would imply P-#P = NC2.