Meta-Complexity and Cryptography

3.0 credits · Graduate

Meta-complexity refers to the computational complexity of problems that are themselves about computations and their complexity. Such problems include the Minimum Circuit Size Problem and the Time-bounded Kolmogorov Complexity Problem, the study of which originated in the 1950s/60s and predate the modern study of Complexity theory. Meta-complexity provides a unifying framework for a variety of central tasks in several areas of computer science, including computational complexity, cryptography, and learning theory, and there has been a recent explosion of works connecting these areas through the lens of Meta-complexity. In this course, we will focus on these recent development, with a particular focus on connections with Cryptography.