The Zero-Error Randomized Query Complexity of the Pointer Function

The pointer function of Göös, Pitassi and Watson [5] and its variants have recently been used to prove separation results among various measures of complexity such as deterministic, randomized and quantum query complexities, exact and approximate polynomial degrees, etc. In particular, the widest possible (quadratic) separations between deterministic and zero-error randomized query complexity, as well as between bounded-error and zero-error randomized query complexity, have been obtained by considering variants [2] of this pointer function. However, as was pointed out in [2], the precise zero-error complexity of the original pointer function was not known. We show a lower bound of Ω̃(n) on the zero-error randomized query complexity of the pointer function on Θ(n log n) bits; since an Õ(n) upper bound is already known [7], our lower bound is optimal up to a factor of polylog n.