Just Take the Average! An Embarrassingly Simple 2^n-Time Algorithm for SVP (and CVP)

We show a 2^{n+o(n)}-time (and space) algorithm for the Shortest Vector Problem on lattices (SVP) that works by repeatedly running an embarrassingly simple "pair and average" sieving-like procedure on a list of lattice vectors. This matches the running time (and space) of the current fastest known algorithm, due to Aggarwal, Dadush, Regev, and Stephens-Davidowitz (ADRS, in STOC, 2015), with a far simpler algorithm. Our algorithm is in fact a modification of the ADRS algorithm, with a certain careful rejection sampling step removed. The correctness of our algorithm follows from a more general "meta-theorem," showing that such rejection sampling steps are unnecessary for a certain class of algorithms and use cases. In particular, this also applies to the related 2^{n + o(n)}-time algorithm for the Closest Vector Problem (CVP), due to Aggarwal, Dadush, and Stephens-Davidowitz (ADS, in FOCS, 2015), yielding a similar embarrassingly simple algorithm for gamma-approximate CVP for any gamma = 1+2^{-o(n/log n)}. (We can also remove the rejection sampling procedure from the 2^{n+o(n)}-time ADS algorithm for exact CVP, but the resulting algorithm is still quite complicated.