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This content will become publicly available on January 1, 2026

Title: Improved Lower Bounds for 3-Query Matching Vector Codes
A Matching Vector (MV) family modulo a positive integer m ≥ 2 is a pair of ordered lists U = (u_1, ⋯, u_K) and V = (v_1, ⋯, v_K) where u_i, v_j ∈ ℤ_m^n with the following property: for any i ∈ [K], the inner product ⟨u_i, v_i⟩ = 0 mod m, and for any i ≠ j, ⟨u_i, v_j⟩ ≠ 0 mod m. An MV family is called r-restricted if inner products ⟨u_i, v_j⟩, for all i,j, take at most r different values. The r-restricted MV families are extremely important since the only known construction of constant-query subexponential locally decodable codes (LDCs) are based on them. Such LDCs constructed via matching vector families are called matching vector codes. Let MV(m,n) (respectively MV(m, n, r)) denote the largest K such that there exists an MV family (respectively r-restricted MV family) of size K in ℤ_m^n. Such a MV family can be transformed in a black-box manner to a good r-query locally decodable code taking messages of length K to codewords of length N = m^n. For small prime m, an almost tight bound MV(m,n) ≤ O(m^{n/2}) was first shown by Dvir, Gopalan, Yekhanin (FOCS'10, SICOMP'11), while for general m, the same paper established an upper bound of O(m^{n-1+o_m(1)}), with o_m(1) denoting a function that goes to zero when m grows. For any arbitrary constant r ≥ 3 and composite m, the best upper bound till date on MV(m,n,r) is O(m^{n/2}), is due to Bhowmick, Dvir and Lovett (STOC'13, SICOMP'14).In a breakthrough work, Alrabiah, Guruswami, Kothari and Manohar (STOC'23) implicitly improve this bound for 3-restricted families to MV(m, n, 3) ≤ O(m^{n/3}). In this work, we present an upper bound for r = 3 where MV(m,n,3) ≤ m^{n/6 +O(log n)}, and as a result, any 3-query matching vector code must have codeword length of N ≥ K^{6-o(1)}.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
2338730
PAR ID:
10572275
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ; ;
Editor(s):
Meka, Raghu
Publisher / Repository:
Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik
Date Published:
Volume:
325
ISSN:
1868-8969
ISBN:
978-3-95977-361-4
Page Range / eLocation ID:
325-325
Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
Locally Decodable Codes Matching Vector Families Theory of computation → Error-correcting codes
Format(s):
Medium: X Size: 19 pages; 885935 bytes Other: application/pdf
Size(s):
19 pages 885935 bytes
Right(s):
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license; info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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