Noise correlation bounds for uniform low degree functions

Abstract

We study correlation bounds under pairwise independent distributions for functions with no large Fourier coefficients. Functions in which all Fourier coefficients are bounded by δ are called δ-uniform. The search for such bounds is motivated by their potential applicability to hardness of approximation, derandomization, and additive combinatorics.

In our main result we show that $\operatorname{\mathbb {E}}[f_{1}(X_{1}^{1},\ldots,X_{1}^{n}) \ldots f_{k}(X_{k}^{1},\ldots,X_{k}^{n})]$ is close to 0 under the following assumptions:

• the vectors $\{ (X_{1}^{j},\ldots,X_{k}^{j}) : 1 \leq j \leq n\}$ are independent identically distributed, and for each j the vector $(X_{1}^{j},\ldots,X_{k}^{j})$ has a pairwise independent distribution;

• the functions f_i are uniform;

• the functions f_i are of low degree.

We compare our result with recent results by the second author for low influence functions and to recent results in additive combinatorics using the Gowers norm. Our proofs extend some techniques from the theory of hypercontractivity to a multilinear setup.