CSCI 6114: Computational Complexity (Grad, Fall 2026)

Syllabus (to be posted shortly)

Student hours for this class: Mondays 10:00-11:00am US Mountain Time, at my zoom link, or by appointment

Online Resources

• Complexity Zoo
• TCS StackExchange
• ECCC (like arXiv's cs.CC and cs.DS categories, but higher-quality; people often cross-post here and arXiv)
• arXiv cs.CC and cs.DS
• DBLP
• Prof. Grochow's Mind Map of (part of) Complexity - for helping explore & pick class topics

Books

There is no textbook for this class, we will read selections from some subset of the books below, lecture notes, and research articles. However, regardless of what we cover in class, these books are great complexity resources! (When available through CU libraries the link below is to the CU Library Proxy that will log you in; if you don't want that look at the URL - it should be fairly clear how to modify it to not do that, or ask me for help)

Some of my favorite non-textbooks

• Wigderson. Mathematics & Computation: A theory revolutionizing technology and science (pdf draft available at link)
• Hemaspaandra & Ogihara. The Complexity Theory Companion. Available digitally through CU libraries here
• Selman (editor). Complexity Theory Retrospective.
• Schöning and Pruim. Gems of Theoretical Computer Science

Some good textbooks

• Arora & Barak. Computational Complexity: A Modern Approach (the draft pdf from their website is fine)
• Du & Ko. Theory of Computational Complexity.
• Jukna. Boolean Function Complexity: Advances and Frontiers (focus on circuit complexity)
• Köbler, Schöning, and Torán, The Graph Isomorphism Problem: Its Structural Complexity. Even though it is focused on GI, it covers a fair bit of just general complexity, including oracles, PH, circuits, randomized classes, interactive proofs, and more.
• Viola. Mathematics of the Impossible. "An iconoclastic book that overhauls computational complexity theory, featuring recent breakthroughs, neglected gems, and simpler expositions of the classics." (I haven't read this one in full yet - if you read parts of it and have thoughts or feedback let me know!)
• For more math behind Graph Isomorphism, check out Lauri & Scapellato, Topics in Graph Automorphisms and Reconstruction
• Some less advanced but really excellent textbooks whose later chapters might make appearances in this class: Sipser Ch. 8-10; Moore & Mertens Ch. 8,10,11; Homer & Selman Ch. 5,7-12

Problem Sets

• Problem Set 1: Circuits and CktP