A PCP Theorem for Interactive Proofs and Applications

. The celebrated PCP Theorem states that any language in NP can be decided via a verifier that reads O (1) bits from a polynomially long proof. Interactive oracle proofs (IOP), a generalization of PCPs, allow the verifier to interact with the prover for multiple rounds while reading a small number of bits from each prover message. While PCPs are relatively well understood, the power captured by IOPs (beyond NP ) has yet to be fully explored. We present a generalization of the PCP theorem for interactive languages. We show that any language decidable by a k ( n ) -round IP has a k ( n ) - round public-coin IOP, where the verifier makes its decision by reading only O (1) bits from each (polynomially long) prover message and O (1) bits from each of its own (random) messages to the prover. Our result and the underlying techniques have several applications. We get a new hardness of approximation result for a stochastic satisfiability problem, we show IOP-to-IOP transformations that previously were known to hold only for IPs, and we formulate a new notion of PCPs (index-decodable PCPs) that enables us to obtain a commit-and-prove SNARK in the random oracle model for nondeterministic computations.