A Faster Algorithm for Finding Tarski Fixed Points

Dang et al. have given an algorithm that can find a Tarski fixed point in a $k$-dimensional lattice of width $n$ using $O(\log^{k} n)$ queries. Multiple authors have conjectured that this algorithm is optimal [Dang et al., Etessami et al.], and indeed this has been proven for two-dimensional instances [Etessami et al.]. We show that these conjectures are false in dimension three or higher by giving an $O(\log^2 n)$ query algorithm for the three-dimensional Tarski problem, which generalises to give an $O(\log^{k-1} n)$ query algorithm for the $k$-dimensional problem when $k \ge 3$.