Group representations that resist random sampling

We show that there exists a family of groups $G_n$ and nontrivial irreducible representations $\rho_n$ such that, for any constant $t$, the average of $\rho_n$ over $t$ uniformly random elements $g_1, \ldots, g_t \in G_n$ has operator norm $1$ with probability approaching 1 as $n \rightarrow \infty$. More quantitatively, we show that there exist families of finite groups for which $\Omega(\log \log |G|)$ random elements are required to bound the norm of a typical representation below $1$. This settles a conjecture of A. Wigderson

Small-Bias Sets for Nonabelian Groups: Derandomizing the Alon-Roichman Theorem

In analogy with epsilon-biased sets over Z_2^n, we construct explicit epsilon-biased sets over nonabelian finite groups G. That is, we find sets S subset G such that | Exp_{x in S} rho(x)| <= epsilon for any nontrivial irreducible representation rho. Equivalently, such sets make G's Cayley graph an expander with eigenvalue |lambda| <= epsilon. The Alon-Roichman theorem shows that random sets of size O(log |G| / epsilon^2) suffice. For groups of the form G = G_1 x ... x G_n, our construction has size poly(max_i |G_i|, n, epsilon^{-1}), and we show that a set S \subset G^n considered by Meka and Zuckerman that fools read-once branching programs over G is also epsilon-biased in this sense. For solvable groups whose abelian quotients have constant exponent, we obtain epsilon-biased sets of size (log |G|)^{1+o(1)} poly(epsilon^{-1}). Our techniques include derandomized squaring (in both the matrix product and tensor product senses) and a Chernoff-like bound on the expected norm of the product of independently random operators that may be of independent interest.Comment: Our results on solvable groups have been significantly improved, giving eps-biased sets of polynomial (as opposed to quasipolynomial) siz

Quantum Hashing for Finite Abelian Groups

We propose a generalization of the quantum hashing technique based on the notion of the small-bias sets. These sets have proved useful in different areas of computer science, and here their properties give an optimal construction for succinct quantum presentation of elements of any finite abelian group, which can be used in various computational and cryptographic scenarios. The known quantum fingerprinting schemas turn out to be the special cases of the proposed quantum hashing for the corresponding abelian group

A Matrix Hyperbolic Cosine Algorithm and Applications

In this paper, we generalize Spencer's hyperbolic cosine algorithm to the matrix-valued setting. We apply the proposed algorithm to several problems by analyzing its computational efficiency under two special cases of matrices; one in which the matrices have a group structure and an other in which they have rank-one. As an application of the former case, we present a deterministic algorithm that, given the multiplication table of a finite group of size $n$, it constructs an expanding Cayley graph of logarithmic degree in near-optimal O(n^2 log^3 n) time. For the latter case, we present a fast deterministic algorithm for spectral sparsification of positive semi-definite matrices, which implies an improved deterministic algorithm for spectral graph sparsification of dense graphs. In addition, we give an elementary connection between spectral sparsification of positive semi-definite matrices and element-wise matrix sparsification. As a consequence, we obtain improved element-wise sparsification algorithms for diagonally dominant-like matrices.Comment: 16 pages, simplified proof and corrected acknowledging of prior work in (current) Section