Mulmuley–Sohoni padded-permanent border determinantal complexity conjecture

At least 16 years old · documented by

For n>mn>m, let X11n−mpermX_{11}^{n-m}\mathrm{per}_m be the padded permanent, viewed as an element of SymnCn2\mathsf{Sym}^n\mathbb{C}^{n^2}, and let Detn{{\mathcal{D}}et}_n be the Euclidean (equivalently, Zariski) closure of the GLn2\mathrm{GL}_{n^2}-orbit of detn\mathrm{det}_n. Mulmuley–Sohoni's border determinantal complexity conjecture. For every c∈N≥1c\in\mathbb{N}_{\ge 1}, one has

X11mc−mperm∉DetmcX_{11}^{m^c-m}\mathrm{per}_m\notin{{\mathcal{D}}et}_{m^c}

for infinitely many mm. Membership of the padded permanent in this orbit closure would imply an upper bound on its determinantal complexity, so this conjecture would imply Valiant's determinantal complexity conjecture. It was proposed as a geometric-complexity-theory approach and remains open in the stated source context.

References

Primary source

Peter Bürgisser, Christian Ikenmeyer and Greta Panova, “No occurrence obstructions in geometric complexity theory”, arXiv:1604.06431 (2018).

Additional references

3 papers in this index state this conjecture (2009–2016). The statement above is taken from the most recent of them; the others are arXiv:1509.02503, arXiv:0910.2443.

Progress summary

Never refreshed

Nothing recorded yet. Refresh searches the literature and the public web for attempts on this problem, and writes the first summary here.

Solutions 1

RemarkAI-assistedClaimed by OpenAI.See full solutionHide full solution

Claimed by OpenAI.

Claims complex border determinantal complexity of the m-by-m permanent is at least c m^3 for all sufficiently large m, allowing arbitrary affine-linear determinant representations and coefficientwise limits; this is a cubic lower bound toward the superpolynomial padded-permanent conjecture.

Repository: https://github.com/openai/math

Manuscript: https://github.com/openai/math/blob/adc7f1241b42e322a6451854ab7e4b4c146bf78a/preprints/A-cubic-lower-bound-for-border-determinantal-complexity-of-the-permanent-September-24-2026/A-cubic-lower-bound-for-border-determinantal-complexity-of-the-permanent-September-24-2026.pdf

  • OpenAI-108-01-A-cubic-lower-bound-for-border-determinantal-complexity-of-the-permanent.pdf555,598 bytesOpen