Which problems have strongly exponential complexity?

For several NP-complete problems, there have been a progression of better but still exponential algorithms. In this paper we address the relative likelihood of sub-exponential algorithms for these problems. We introduce a generalized reduction which we call sub-exponential reduction family (SERF) that preserves sub-exponential complexity. We show that Circuit-SAT is SERF-complete for all NP-search problems, and that for any fixed k, k-SAT, k-Colorability, k-Set Cover Independent Set, Clique, Vertex Cover are SERF-complete for the class SNP of search problems expressible by second order existential formulas whose first order part is universal. In particular, sub-exponential complexity for any one of the above problems implies the same for all others. We also look at the issue of proving strongly exponential lower bounds (that is, bounds of the form 2/sup /spl Omega/(n)/) for AC/sup 0/. This problem is even open far depth-3 circuits. In fact, such a bound for depth-3 circuits with even limited (at most n/sup /spl epsiv//) fan-infer bottom-level gates would imply a nonlinear size lower bound for logarithmic depth circuits. We show that with high probability even degree 2 random GF(2) polynomials require strongly exponential site for /spl Sigma//sub 3//sup k/ circuits for k=o(loglogn). We thus exhibit a much smaller space of 2(0(/sup n2/)) functions such that almost every function in this class requires strongly exponential size /spl Sigma//sub 3//sup k/ circuits. As a corollary, we derive a pseudorandom generator (requiring O(n/sup 2/) bits of advice) that maps n bits into a larger number of bits so that computing parity on the range is hard for /spl Sigma//sub 3//sup k/ circuits. Our main technical lemma is an algorithm that, for any fixed /spl epsiv/>0, represents an arbitrary k-CNF formula as a disjunction of 2/sup /spl epsiv/n/ k-CNF formulas that are sparse, e.g., each having O(n) clauses.