Revisiting the Sanders-Freiman-Ruzsa Theorem in Fpn\mathbb{F}_p^n and its Application to Non-malleable Codes

Non-malleable codes (NMCs) protect sensitive data against degrees of corruption that prohibit error detection, ensuring instead that a corrupted codeword decodes correctly or to something that bears little relation to the original message. The split-state model, in which codewords consist of two blocks, considers adversaries who tamper with either block arbitrarily but independently of the other. The simplest construction in this model, due to Aggarwal, Dodis, and Lovett (STOC'14), was shown to give NMCs sending k-bit messages to $O(k^7)$-bit codewords. It is conjectured, however, that the construction allows linear-length codewords. Towards resolving this conjecture, we show that the construction allows for code-length $O(k^5)$. This is achieved by analysing a special case of Sanders's Bogolyubov-Ruzsa theorem for general Abelian groups. Closely following the excellent exposition of this result for the group $\mathbb{F}_2^n$ by Lovett, we expose its dependence on $p$ for the group $\mathbb{F}_p^n$, where $p$ is a prime

Gaussian width bounds with applications to arithmetic progressions in random settings

Motivated by problems on random differences in Szemer\'{e}di's theorem and on large deviations for arithmetic progressions in random sets, we prove upper bounds on the Gaussian width of point sets that are formed by the image of the $n$-dimensional Boolean hypercube under a mapping $\psi:\mathbb{R}^n\to\mathbb{R}^k$, where each coordinate is a constant-degree multilinear polynomial with 0-1 coefficients. We show the following applications of our bounds. Let $[\mathbb{Z}/N\mathbb{Z}]_p$ be the random subset of $\mathbb{Z}/N\mathbb{Z}$ containing each element independently with probability $p$. $\bullet$ A set $D\subseteq \mathbb{Z}/N\mathbb{Z}$ is $\ell$-intersective if any dense subset of $\mathbb{Z}/N\mathbb{Z}$ contains a proper $(\ell+1)$-term arithmetic progression with common difference in $D$. Our main result implies that $[\mathbb{Z}/N\mathbb{Z}]_p$ is $\ell$-intersective with probability $1 - o(1)$ provided $p \geq \omega(N^{-\beta_\ell}\log N)$ for $\beta_\ell = (\lceil(\ell+1)/2\rceil)^{-1}$. This gives a polynomial improvement for all $\ell \ge 3$ of a previous bound due to Frantzikinakis, Lesigne and Wierdl, and reproves more directly the same improvement shown recently by the authors and Dvir. $\bullet$ Let $X_k$ be the number of $k$-term arithmetic progressions in $[\mathbb{Z}/N\mathbb{Z}]_p$ and consider the large deviation rate $\rho_k(\delta) = \log\Pr[X_k \geq (1+\delta)\mathbb{E}X_k]$. We give quadratic improvements of the best-known range of $p$ for which a highly precise estimate of $\rho_k(\delta)$ due to Bhattacharya, Ganguly, Shao and Zhao is valid for all odd $k \geq 5$. We also discuss connections with error correcting codes (locally decodable codes) and the Banach-space notion of type for injective tensor products of $\ell_p$-spaces.Comment: 18 pages, some typos fixe

On the orthogonal rank of Cayley graphs and impossibility of quantum round elimination

After Bob sends Alice a bit, she responds with a lengthy reply. At the cost of a factor of two in the total communication, Alice could just as well have given the two possible replies without listening and have Bob select which applies to him. Motivated by a conjecture stating that this form of "round elimination" is impossible in exact quantum communication complexity, we study the orthogonal rank and a symmetric variant thereof for a certain family of Cayley graphs. The orthogonal rank of a graph is the smallest number $d$ for which one can label each vertex with a nonzero $d$-dimensional complex vector such that adjacent vertices receive orthogonal vectors. We show an exp$(n)$ lower bound on the orthogonal rank of the graph on $\{0,1\}^n$ in which two strings are adjacent if they have Hamming distance at least $n/2$. In combination with previous work, this implies an affirmative answer to the above conjecture.Comment: 13 page

Failure of the trilinear operator space Grothendieck theorem

We give a counterexample to a trilinear version of the operator space Grothendieck theorem. In particular, we show that for trilinear forms on $\ell_\infty$, the ratio of the symmetrized completely bounded norm and the jointly completely bounded norm is in general unbounded, answering a question of Pisier. The proof is based on a non-commutative version of the generalized von Neumann inequality from additive combinatorics.Comment: Reformatted for Discrete Analysi

On Embeddings of l_1^k from Locally Decodable Codes

We show that any $q$-query locally decodable code (LDC) gives a copy of $\ell_1^k$ with small distortion in the Banach space of $q$-linear forms on $\ell_{p_1}^N\times\cdots\times\ell_{p_q}^N$, provided $1/p_1 + \cdots + 1/p_q \leq 1$ and where $k$, $N$, and the distortion are simple functions of the code parameters. We exhibit the copy of $\ell_1^k$ by constructing a basis for it directly from "smooth" LDC decoders. Based on this, we give alternative proofs for known lower bounds on the length of 2-query LDCs. Using similar techniques, we reprove known lower bounds for larger $q$. We also discuss the relation with an alternative proof, due to Pisier, of a result of Naor, Regev, and the author on cotype properties of projective tensor products of $\ell_p$ spaces

Locally Decodable Quantum Codes

We study a quantum analogue of locally decodable error-correcting codes. A q-query locally decodable quantum code encodes n classical bits in an m-qubit state, in such a way that each of the encoded bits can be recovered with high probability by a measurement on at most q qubits of the quantum code, even if a constant fraction of its qubits have been corrupted adversarially. We show that such a quantum code can be transformed into a classical q-query locally decodable code of the same length that can be decoded well on average (albeit with smaller success probability and noise-tolerance). This shows, roughly speaking, that q-query quantum codes are not significantly better than q-query classical codes, at least for constant or small q.Comment: 15 pages, LaTe

Subspaces of tensors with high analytic rank

It is shown that for any subspace V⊆Fn×⋯×np of d-tensors, if dim(V)≥tnd−1, then there is subspace W⊆V of dimension at least t/(dr)−1 whose nonzero elements all have analytic rank Ωd,p(r). As an application, we generalize a result of Altman on Szemerédi's theorem with random differences

Outlaw distributions and locally decodable codes

Locally decodable codes (LDCs) are error correcting codes that allow for decoding of a single message bit using a small number of queries to a corrupted encoding. Despite decades of study, the optimal trade-off between query complexity and codeword length is far from understood. In this work, we give a new characterization of LDCs using distributions over Boolean functions whose expectation is hard to approximate (in~$L_\infty$~norm) with a small number of samples. We coin the term `outlaw distributions' for such distributions since they `defy' the Law of Large Numbers. We show that the existence of outlaw distributions over sufficiently `smooth' functions implies the existence of constant query LDCs and vice versa. We give several candidates for outlaw distributions over smooth functions coming from finite field incidence geometry, additive combinatorics and from hypergraph (non)expanders. We also prove a useful lemma showing that (smooth) LDCs which are only required to work on average over a random message and a random message index can be turned into true LDCs at the cost of only constant factors in the parameters.Comment: A preliminary version of this paper appeared in the proceedings of ITCS 201