We give new combinatorial proofs of known almost-periodicity results for
sumsets of sets with small doubling in the spirit of Croot and Sisask, whose
almost-periodicity lemma has had far-reaching implications in additive
combinatorics. We provide an alternative (and L^p-norm free) point of view,
which allows for proofs to easily be converted to probabilistic algorithms that
decide membership in almost-periodic sumsets of dense subsets of F_2^n.
As an application, we give a new algorithmic version of the quasipolynomial
Bogolyubov-Ruzsa lemma recently proved by Sanders. Together with the results by
the last two authors, this implies an algorithmic version of the quadratic
Goldreich-Levin theorem in which the number of terms in the quadratic Fourier
decomposition of a given function is quasipolynomial in the error parameter,
compared with an exponential dependence previously proved by the authors. It
also improves the running time of the algorithm to have quasipolynomial
dependence instead of an exponential one.
We also give an application to the problem of finding large subspaces in
sumsets of dense sets. Green showed that the sumset of a dense subset of F_2^n
contains a large subspace. Using Fourier analytic methods, Sanders proved that
such a subspace must have dimension bounded below by a constant times the
density times n. We provide an alternative (and L^p norm-free) proof of a
comparable bound, which is analogous to a recent result of Croot, Laba and
Sisask in the integers.Comment: 28 page