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For S ⊆ 𝔽ⁿ, consider the linear space of restrictions of degree-d polynomials to S. The Hilbert function of S, denoted h_S(d,𝔽), is the dimension of this space. We obtain a tight lower bound on the smallest value of the Hilbert function of subsets S of arbitrary finite grids in 𝔽ⁿ with a fixed size |S|. We achieve this by proving that this value coincides with a combinatorial quantity, namely the smallest number of low Hamming weight points in a down-closed set of size |S|. Understanding the smallest values of Hilbert functions is closely related to the study of degree-d closure of sets, a notion introduced by Nie and Wang (Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Series A, 2015). We use bounds on the Hilbert function to obtain a tight bound on the size of degree-d closures of subsets of 𝔽_qⁿ, which answers a question posed by Doron, Ta-Shma, and Tell (Computational Complexity, 2022). We use the bounds on the Hilbert function and degree-d closure of sets to prove that a random low-degree polynomial is an extractor for samplable randomness sources. Most notably, we prove the existence of low-degree extractors and dispersers for sources generated by constant-degree polynomials and polynomial-size circuits. Until recently, even the existence of arbitrary deterministic extractors for such sources was not known. 

We construct explicit deterministic extractors for polynomial images of varieties, that is, distributions sampled by applying a low-degree polynomial map 𝑓 to an element sampled uniformly at random from a 𝑘-dimensional variety 𝑉. This class of sources generalizes both polynomial sources, studied by Dvir, Gabizon and Wigderson (FOCS 2007, Comput. Complex. 2009), and variety sources, studied by Dvir (CCC 2009, Comput. Complex. 2012). Assuming certain natural non-degeneracy conditions on the map 𝑓 and the variety 𝑉 , which in particular ensure that the source has enough min-entropy, we extract almost all the min-entropy of the distribution. Unlike the Dvir–Gabizon–Wigderson and Dvir results, our construction works over large enough finite fields of arbitrary characteristic. One key part of our construction is an improved deterministic rank extractor for varieties. As a by-product, we obtain explicit Noether normalization lemmas for affine varieties and affine algebras. Additionally, we generalize a construction of affine extractors with exponentially small error due to Bourgain, Dvir and Leeman (Comput. Complex. 2016) by extending it to all finite prime fields of quasipolynomial size. 

Multivariate multipoint evaluation is the problem of evaluating a multivariate polynomial, given as a coefficient vector, simultaneously at multiple evaluation points. In this work, we show that there exists a deterministic algorithm for multivariate multipoint evaluation over any finite field F that outputs the evaluations of an m-variate polynomial of degree less than d in each variable at N points in time (dm + N)1+o(1) · poly(m, d, log |F|) for all m ∈ N and all sufficiently large d ∈ N. A previous work of Kedlaya and Umans (FOCS 2008, SICOMP 2011) achieved the same time complexity when the number of variables m is at most d^{o(1)} and had left the problem of removing this condition as an open problem. A recent work of Bhargava, Ghosh, Kumar and Mohapatra (STOC 2022) answered this question when the underlying field is not too large and has characteristic less than d^{o(1)}. In this work, we remove this constraint on the number of variables over all finite fields, thereby answering the question of Kedlaya and Umans over all finite fields. Our algorithm relies on a non-trivial combination of ideas from three seemingly different previously knownalgorithms for multivariate multipoint evaluation, namely the algorithms of Kedlaya and Umans, that of Björklund, Kaski and Williams (IPEC 2017, Algorithmica 2019), and that of Bhargava, Ghosh, Kumar and Mohapatra, together with a result of Bombieri and Vinogradov from analytic number theory about the distribution of primes in an arithmetic progression. We also present a second algorithm for multivariate multipoint evaluation that is completely elementary and in particular, avoids the use of the Bombieri–Vinogradov Theorem. However, it requires a mild assumption that the field size is bounded by an exponential-tower in d of bounded height.