Finding explicit extractors is an important derandomization goal that has received a lot of attention in the past decade. This research has focused on two approaches, one related to hashing and the other to pseudorandom generators. A third view, regarding extractors as good error correcting codes, was noticed before. Yet, ... more >>>

We consider a general approach to the hoary problem of (im)proving circuit lower bounds. We define notions of hardness condensing and hardness extraction, in analogy to the corresponding notions from the computational theory of randomness. A hardness condenser is a procedure that takes in a Boolean function as input, as ... more >>>

We give new constructions of randomness extractors and lossless condensers that are optimal to within constant factors in both the seed length and the output length. For extractors, this matches the parameters of the current best known construction [LRVW03]; for lossless condensers, the previous best constructions achieved optimality to within ... 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 >>>

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 >>>

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 >>>

We initiate a comprehensive study of the question of randomness extractions from two somewhat dependent sources of defective randomness.
Specifically, we present three natural models, which are based on different natural perspectives on the notion of bounded dependency between a pair of distributions.
Going from the more restricted model ... more >>>

In 2007 Guruswami, Umans and Vadhan gave an explicit construction of a lossless condenser based on Parvaresh-Vardy codes. This lossless condenser is a basic building block in many constructions, and, in particular, is behind the state of the art extractor constructions.

We give an alternative construction that is based on ... more >>>

A Chor--Goldreich (CG) source [CG88] is a sequence of random variables $X = X_1 \circ \ldots \circ X_t$, each $X_i \sim \{0,1 \{^d$, such that each $X_i$ has $\delta d$ min-entropy for some constant $\delta > 0$, even conditioned on any fixing of $X_1 \circ \ldots \circ X_{i-1}$. We typically ... more >>>