A polynomial-stretch pseudorandom generator (PPRG) in NC$^0$ (i.e., constant parallel time) is one of the most important cryptographic primitives, especially for constructing highly efficient cryptography and indistinguishability obfuscation. The celebrated work (Applebaum, Ishai, and Kushilevitz, SIAM Journal on Computing, 2006) on randomized encodings yields the characterization of sublinear-stretch pseudorandom generators ... more >>>
Random walks on expanders are a powerful tool which found applications in many areas of theoretical computer science, and beyond. However, they come with an inherent cost -- the spectral expansion of the corresponding power graph deteriorates at a rate that is exponential in the length of the walk. As ... more >>>
The problem of testing monotonicity for Boolean functions on the hypergrid, $f:[n]^d \to \{0,1\}$ is a classic topic in property testing. When $n=2$, the domain is the hypercube. For the hypercube case, a breakthrough result of Khot-Minzer-Safra (FOCS 2015) gave a non-adaptive, one-sided tester making $\widetilde{O}(\varepsilon^{-2}\sqrt{d})$ queries. Up to polylog ... more >>>