A pair of sources $\mathbf{X},\mathbf{Y}$ over $\{0,1\}^n$ are $k$-indistinguishable if their projections to any $k$ coordinates are identically distributed. Can some $\mathit{AC^0}$ function distinguish between two such sources when $k$ is big, say $k=n^{0.1}$? Braverman's theorem (Commun. ACM 2011) implies a negative answer when $\mathbf{X}$ is uniform, whereas Bogdanov et ... more >>>

We show equivalence between the existence of one-way
functions and the existence of a \emph{sparse} language that is
hard-on-average w.r.t. some efficiently samplable ``high-entropy''
distribution.
In more detail, the following are equivalent:
- The existentence of a $S(\cdot)$-sparse language $L$ that is
hard-on-average with respect to some samplable ... more >>>

Cohen, Peri and Ta-Shma (STOC'21) considered the following question: Assume the vertices of an expander graph are labelled by $\pm 1$. What "test" functions $f : \{\pm 1\}^t \to \{\pm1 \}$ can or cannot distinguish $t$ independent samples from those obtained by a random walk? [CPTS'21] considered only balanced labelling, ... more >>>