We introduce a new approach to construct extractors -- combinatorial
objects akin to expander graphs that have several applications.
Our approach is based on error correcting codes and on the Nisan-Wigderson
pseudorandom generator. An application of our approach yields a
construction that is simple to ... more >>>

We give an explicit construction of a constant-distortion embedding of an n-dimensional L_2 space into an n^{1+o(1)}-dimensional L_1 space.

We give an explicit (in particular, deterministic polynomial time)
construction of subspaces $X
\subseteq \R^N$ of dimension $(1-o(1))N$ such that for every $x \in X$,
$$(\log N)^{-O(\log\log\log N)} \sqrt{N}\, \|x\|_2 \leq \|x\|_1 \leq \sqrt{N}\, \|x\|_2.$$
If we are allowed to use $N^{1/\log\log N}\leq N^{o(1)}$ random bits
and ... more >>>

The main purpose of this work is to formally define monotone expanders and motivate their study with (known and new) connections to other graphs and to several computational and pseudorandomness problems. In particular we explain how monotone expanders of constant degree lead to:
(1) Constant degree dimension expanders in finite ... more >>>

We present new explicit constructions of *deterministic* randomness extractors, dispersers and related objects. We say that a
distribution $X$ on binary strings of length $n$ is a
$\delta$-source if $X$ assigns probability at most $2^{-\delta n}$
to any string of length $n$. For every $\delta>0$ we construct the
following poly($n$)-time ... more >>>

A subspace-evasive set over a field ${\mathbb F}$ is a subset of ${\mathbb F}^n$ that has small intersection with any low-dimensional affine subspace of ${\mathbb F}^n$. Interest in subspace evasive sets began in the work of Pudlák and Rödl (Quaderni di Matematica 2004). More recently, Guruswami (CCC 2011) showed that ... more >>>

Let $X \subseteq \mathbb{R}^{n}$ and let ${\mathcal C}$ be a class of functions mapping $\mathbb{R}^{n} \rightarrow \{-1,1\}.$ The famous VC-Theorem states that a random subset $S$ of $X$ of size $O(\frac{d}{\epsilon^{2}} \log \frac{d}{\epsilon})$, where $d$ is the VC-Dimension of ${\mathcal C}$, is (with constant probability) an $\epsilon$-approximation for ${\mathcal C}$ ... more >>>

We construct an explicit family of linear rank-metric codes over any field ${\mathbb F}_h$ that enables efficient list decoding up to a fraction $\rho$ of errors in the rank metric with a rate of $1-\rho-\epsilon$, for any desired $\rho \in (0,1)$ and $\epsilon > 0$. Previously, a Monte Carlo construction ... more >>>

We give a length-efficient puncturing of Reed-Muller codes which preserves its distance properties. Formally, for the Reed-Muller code encoding $n$-variate degree-$d$ polynomials over ${\mathbb F}_q$ with $q \ge \Omega(d/\delta)$, we present an explicit (multi)-set $S \subseteq {\mathbb F}_q^n$ of size $N=\mathrm{poly}(n^d/\delta)$ such that every nonzero polynomial vanishes on at most ... more >>>

An $(n,k)$-bit-fixing source is a distribution on $n$ bit strings, that is fixed on $n-k$ of the coordinates, and jointly uniform on the remaining $k$ bits. Explicit constructions of bit-fixing extractors by Gabizon, Raz and Shaltiel [SICOMP 2006] and Rao [CCC 2009], extract $(1-o(1)) \cdot k$ bits for $k = ... more >>>

In his 1947 paper that inaugurated the probabilistic method, Erdös proved the existence of $2\log{n}$-Ramsey graphs on $n$ vertices. Matching Erdös' result with a constructive proof is a central problem in combinatorics, that has gained a significant attention in the literature. The state of the art result was obtained in ... more >>>

We explicitly construct an extractor for two independent sources on $n$ bits, each with min-entropy at least $\log^C n$ for a large enough constant $C$. Our extractor outputs one bit and has error $n^{-\Omega(1)}$. The best previous extractor, by Bourgain [B2], required each source to have min-entropy $.499n$.

A key ... more >>>

A non-malleable extractor is a seeded extractor with a very strong guarantee - the output of a non-malleable extractor obtained using a typical seed is close to uniform even conditioned on the output obtained using any other seed. The first contribution of this paper consists of two new and improved ... more >>>

The main contribution of this work is an explicit construction of extractors for near logarithmic min-entropy. For any $\delta > 0$ we construct an extractor for $O(1/\delta)$ $n$-bit sources with min-entropy $(\log{n})^{1+\delta}$. This is most interesting when $\delta$ is set to a small constant, though the result also yields an ... more >>>

We construct non-malleable extractors with seed length $d = O(\log{n}+\log^{3}(1/\epsilon))$ for $n$-bit sources with min-entropy $k = \Omega(d)$, where $\epsilon$ is the error guarantee. In particular, the seed length is logarithmic in $n$ for $\epsilon> 2^{-(\log{n})^{1/3}}$. This improves upon existing constructions that either require super-logarithmic seed length even for constant ... more >>>

A typical obstacle one faces when constructing pseudorandom objects is undesired correlations between random variables. Identifying this obstacle and constructing certain types of "correlation breakers" was central for recent exciting advances in the construction of multi-source and non-malleable extractors. One instantiation of correlation breakers is correlation breakers with advice. These ... more >>>

We explicitly construct extractors for two independent $n$-bit sources of $(\log n)^{1+o(1)}$ min-entropy. Previous constructions required either $\mathrm{polylog}(n)$ min-entropy \cite{CZ15,Meka15} or five sources \cite{Cohen16}.

Our result extends the breakthrough result of Chattopadhyay and Zuckerman \cite{CZ15} and uses the non-malleable extractor of Cohen \cite{Cohen16}. The main new ingredient in our construction ... more >>>

We construct explicit two-source extractors for $n$ bit sources,
requiring $n^\alpha$ min-entropy and having error $2^{-n^\beta}$,
for some constants $0 < \alpha,\beta < 1$. Previously, constructions
for exponentially small error required either min-entropy
$0.49n$ \cite{Bou05} or three sources \cite{Li15}. The construction
combines somewhere-random condensers based on the Incidence
Theorem \cite{Zuc06,Li11}, ... more >>>

This paper makes progress on the problem of explicitly constructing a binary tree code with constant distance and constant alphabet size.

For every constant $\delta < 1$ we give an explicit binary tree code with distance $\delta$ and alphabet size $(\log{n})^{O(1)}$, where $n$ is the depth of the tree. This ... more >>>

A code $\mathcal{C}$ is $(1-\tau,L)$ erasure list-decodable if for every codeword $w$, after erasing any $1-\tau$ fraction of the symbols of $w$,
the remaining $\tau$-fraction of its symbols have at most $L$ possible completions into codewords of $\mathcal{C}$.
Non-explicitly, there exist binary $(1-\tau,L)$ erasure list-decodable codes having rate $O(\tau)$ and ... more >>>

In their seminal work, Chattopadhyay and Zuckerman (STOC'16) constructed a two-source extractor with error $\varepsilon$ for $n$-bit sources having min-entropy $poly\log(n/\varepsilon)$. Unfortunately, the construction running-time is $poly(n/\varepsilon)$, which means that with polynomial-time constructions, only polynomially-large errors are possible. Our main result is a $poly(n,\log(1/\varepsilon))$-time computable two-source condenser. For any $k ... more >>>

The $\delta$-Coin Problem is the computational problem of distinguishing between coins that are heads with probability $(1+\delta)/2$ or $(1-\delta)/2,$ where $\delta$ is a parameter that is going to $0$. We study the complexity of this problem in the model of constant-depth Boolean circuits and prove the following results.

1. Upper ... more >>>

We give an explicit pseudorandom generator (PRG) for constant-depth read-once formulas over the basis $\{\wedge, \vee, \neg\}$ with unbounded fan-in. The seed length of our PRG is $\widetilde{O}(\log(n/\varepsilon))$. Previously, PRGs with near-optimal seed length were known only for the depth-2 case (Gopalan et al. FOCS '12). For a constant depth ... more >>>

We study the problem of constructing explicit families of matrices which cannot be expressed as a product of a few sparse matrices. In addition to being a natural mathematical question on its own, this problem appears in various incarnations in computer science; the most significant being in the context of ... more >>>

There are only a few known general approaches for constructing explicit pseudorandom generators (PRGs). The ``iterated restrictions'' approach, pioneered by Ajtai and Wigderson [AW89], has provided PRGs with seed length $\mathrm{polylog} n$ or even $\tilde{O}(\log n)$ for several restricted models of computation. Can this approach ever achieve the optimal seed ... more >>>

We give a complete answer to the following basic question: ``What is the maximal fraction of deletions or insertions tolerable by $q$-ary list-decodable codes with non-vanishing information rate?''

This question has been open even for binary codes, including the restriction to the binary insertion-only setting, where the best known results ... more >>>

We consider the problem of efficiently constructing an as large as possible family of permutations such that each pair of permutations are far part (i.e., disagree on a constant fraction of their inputs).
Specifically, for every $n\in\N$, we present a collection of $N=N(n)=(n!)^{\Omega(1)}$ pairwise far apart permutations $\{\pi_i:[n]\to[n]\}_{i\in[N]}$ and ... more >>>

Since they were first introduced by Schulman (STOC 1993), the construction of tree codes remained an elusive open problem. The state-of-the-art construction by Cohen, Haeupler and Schulman (STOC 2018) has constant distance and $(\log n)^{e}$ colors for some constant $e > 1$ that depends on the distance, where $n$ is ... more >>>

We consider the range avoidance problem (called Avoid): given the description of a circuit $C:\{0, 1\}^n \to \{0, 1\}^\ell$ (where $\ell > n$), find a string $y\in\{0, 1\}^\ell$ that is not in the range of $C$. This problem is complete for the class APEPP that corresponds to explicit constructions of ... more >>>

In the range avoidance problem, the input is a multi-output Boolean circuit with more outputs than inputs, and the goal is to find a string outside its range (which is guaranteed to exist). We show that well-known explicit construction questions such as finding binary linear codes achieving the Gilbert-Varshamov bound ... more >>>

This is a survey of unconditional *pseudorandom generators* (PRGs). A PRG uses a short, truly random seed to generate a long, "pseudorandom" sequence of bits. To be more specific, for each restricted model of computation (e.g., bounded-depth circuits or read-once branching programs), we would like to design a PRG that ... more >>>

Range Avoidance (AVOID) is a total search problem where, given a Boolean circuit $C\colon\{0,1\}^n\to\{0,1\}^m$, $m>n$, the task is to find a $y\in\{0,1\}^m$ outside the range of $C$. For an integer $k\geq 2$, $NC^0_k$-AVOID is a special case of AVOID where each output bit of $C$ depends on at most $k$ ... more >>>

One of the earliest models of weak randomness is the Chor-Goldreich (CG) source. A $(t,n,k)$-CG source is a sequence of random variables $\mathbf{X}=(\mathbf{X}_1,\dots,\mathbf{X}_t) \sim (\{0,1\}^n)^t$, where each $\mathbf{X}_i$ has min-entropy $k$ conditioned on any fixing of $\mathbf{X}_1,\dots,\mathbf{X}_{i-1}$. Chor and Goldreich proved that there is no deterministic way to extract randomness ... more >>>

We investigate the task of deterministically condensing randomness from Online Non-Oblivious Symbol Fixing (oNOSF) sources, a natural model of defective random sources for which it is known that extraction is impossible [AORSV, EUROCRYPT'20]. A $(g,\ell)$-oNOSF source is a sequence of $\ell$ blocks $\mathbf{X} = (\mathbf{X}_1, \dots, \mathbf{X}_{\ell})\sim (\{0, 1\}^{n})^{\ell}$, where ... more >>>

We show that the complexity class of exponential-time Arthur Merlin with sub-exponential advice ($AMEXP_{/2^{n^{\varepsilon}}}$) requires circuit complexity at least $2^n/n$. Previously, the best known such near-maximum lower bounds were for symmetric exponential time by Chen, Hirahara, and Ren (STOC'24) and Li (STOC'24), or randomized exponential time with MCSP oracle and ... more >>>