On Communication Complexity of Fixed Point Computation

Brouwer’s fixed point theorem states that any continuous function from a compact convex space to itself has a fixed point. Roughgarden and Weinstein (FOCS 2016) initiated the study of fixed point computation in the two-player communication model, where each player gets a function from [0,1]^n to [0,1]^n, and their goal is to find an approximate fixed point of the composition of the two functions. They left it as an open question to show a lower bound of 2^{\Omega (n)} for the (randomized) communication complexity of this problem, in the range of parameters which make it a total search problem. We answer this question affirmatively. Additionally, we introduce two natural fixed point problems in the two-player communication model. Each player is given a function from [0,1]^n to [0,1]^{n/2}, and their goal is to find an approximate fixed point of the concatenation of the functions. Each player is given a function from [0,1]^n to [0,1]^{n}, and their goal is to find an approximate fixed point of the mean of the functions. We show a randomized communication complexity lower bound of 2^{\Omega (n)} for these problems (for some constant approximation factor). Finally, we initiate the study of finding a panchromatic simplex in a Sperner-coloring of a triangulation (guaranteed by Sperner’s lemma) in the two-player communication model: A triangulation T of the d-simplex is publicly known and one player is given a set S_A\subset T and a coloring function from S_A to \lbrace 0,\ldots ,d/2\rbrace, and the other player is given a set S_B\subset T and a coloring function from S_B to \lbrace d/2+1,\ldots ,d\rbrace, such that S_A\dot{\cup }S_B=T, and their goal is to find a panchromatic simplex. We show a randomized communication complexity lower bound of |T|^{\Omega (1)} for the aforementioned problem as well (when d is large). On the positive side, we show that if d\le 4 then there is a deterministic protocol for the Sperner problem with O((\log |T|)^2) bits of communication.