Deterministic Identity Testing for Sum of Read-Once Oblivious Arithmetic Branching Programs

Abstract

A read-once oblivious arithmetic branching program (ROABP) is an arithmetic branching program (ABP) where each variable occurs in at most one layer. We give the first polynomial-time whitebox identity test for a polynomial computed by a sum of constantly many ROABPs. We also give a corresponding blackbox algorithm with quasi-polynomial-time complexity $${n^{O({\rm log}\,n)}}$$nO(logn). In both the cases, our time complexity is double exponential in the number of ROABPs. ROABPs are a generalization of set-multilinear depth-3 circuits. The prior results for the sum of constantly many set-multilinear depth-3 circuits were only slightly better than brute force, i.e., exponential time. Our techniques are a new interplay of three concepts for ROABP: low evaluation dimension, basis isolating weight assignment and low-support rank concentration. We relate basis isolation to rank concentration and extend it to a sum of two ROABPs using evaluation dimension.