En route to the log-rank conjecture: New reductions and equivalent formulations

We prove that several measures in communication complexity are equivalent, up to polynomial factors in the logarithm of the rank of the associated matrix: deterministic communication complexity, randomized communication complexity, information cost and zero-communication cost. This shows that in order to prove the log-rank conjecture, it suffices to show that low-rank matrices have efficient protocols in any of the aforementioned measures. Furthermore, we show that the notion of zero-communication complexity is equivalent to an extension of the common discrepancy bound. Linial et al. [Combinatorica, 2007] showed that the discrepancy of a sign matrix is lower-bounded by an inverse polynomial in the logarithm of the associated matrix. We show that if these results can be generalized to the extended discrepancy, this will imply the log-rank conjecture. © 2014 Springer-Verlag