Deterministic identity testing for sum of read-once oblivious arithmetic branching programs

A read-once oblivious arithmetic branching program (ROABP) is an arithmetic branching pro-gram (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 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 (or partial derivatives)