The epsilon-approximate degree, deg_epsilon(f), of a Boolean function f is the least degree of a real-valued polynomial that approximates f pointwise to within epsilon. A sound and complete certificate for approximate degree being at least k is a pair of probability distributions, also known as a dual polynomial, that are perfectly k-wise indistinguishable, but are distinguishable by f with advantage 1 - epsilon. Our contributions are: - We give a simple, explicit new construction of a dual polynomial for the AND function on n bits, certifying that its epsilon-approximate degree is Omega (sqrt{n log 1/epsilon}). This construction is the first to extend to the notion of weighted degree, and yields the first explicit certificate that the 1/3-approximate degree of any (possibly unbalanced) read-once DNF is Omega(sqrt{n}). It draws a novel connection between the approximate degree of AND and anti-concentration of the Binomial distribution. - We show that any pair of symmetric distributions on n-bit strings that are perfectly k-wise indistinguishable are also statistically K-wise indistinguishable with at most K^{3/2} * exp (-Omega (k^2/K)) error for all k < K <= n/64. This bound is essentially tight, and implies that any symmetric function f is a reconstruction function with constant advantage for a ramp secret sharing scheme that is secure against size-K coalitions with statistical error K^{3/2} * exp (-Omega (deg_{1/3}(f)^2/K)) for all values of K up to n/64 simultaneously. Previous secret sharing schemes required that K be determined in advance, and only worked for f=AND. Our analysis draws another new connection between approximate degree and concentration phenomena. As a corollary of this result, we show that for any d <= n/64, any degree d polynomial approximating a symmetric function f to error 1/3 must have coefficients of l_1-norm at least K^{-3/2} * exp ({Omega (deg_{1/3}(f)^2/d)}). We also show this bound is essentially tight for any d > deg_{1/3}(f). These upper and lower bounds were also previously only known in the case f=AND.
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Explicit universal minimal constants for polynomial growth of groups
Abstract Shalom and Tao showed that a polynomial upper bound on the size of a single, large enough ball in a Cayley graph implies that the underlying group has a nilpotent subgroup with index and degree of polynomial growth both bounded effectively.The third and fourth authors proved the optimal bound on the degree of polynomial growth of this subgroup, at the expense of making some other parts of the result ineffective.In the present paper, we prove the optimal bound on the degree of polynomial growth without making any losses elsewhere.As a consequence, we show that there exist explicit positive numbers ε d \varepsilon_{d} such that, in any group with growth at least a polynomial of degree 𝑑, the growth is at least ε d n d \varepsilon_{d}n^{d} .We indicate some applications in probability; in particular, we show that the gap at 1 for the critical probability for Bernoulli site percolation on a Cayley graph, recently proven to exist by Panagiotis and Severo, is at least exp { - exp { 17 exp { 100 ⋅ 8 100 } } } \exp\{-\exp\{17\exp\{100\cdot 8^{100}\}\}\} .
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- Award ID(s):
- 1954086
- PAR ID:
- 10428110
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Group Theory
- Volume:
- 0
- Issue:
- 0
- ISSN:
- 1433-5883
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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