Given Boolean functions f, g : 𝔽₂ⁿ → {-1,+1}, we say they are linearly isomorphic if there exists A ∈ GL_n(𝔽₂) such that f(x) = g(Ax) for all x. We study this problem in the tolerant property testing framework under the known-unknown model, where g is given explicitly and f is accessible only via oracle queries, meaning the algorithm may adaptively request the value of f(x) for inputs x ∈ 𝔽₂ⁿ of its choice. Given parameters ε ≥ 0 and ω > 0, the goal is to distinguish whether there exists A ∈ GL_n(𝔽₂) such that the normalized Hamming distance between f and g(Ax) is at most ε, or whether for every A ∈ GL_n(𝔽₂) the distance is at least ε+ω. Our main result is a tolerant tester making Õ ((m/ω) ⁴) queries to f, where m is an upper bound on the spectral norm of g, improving the previous Õ ((m/ω) ^{24}) bound of Wimmer and Yoshida. We complement this with a nearly matching lower bound of Ω(m²) for constant ω (for example, ω = 1/4), improving the prior Ω(log m) lower bound of Grigorescu, Wimmer and Xie. A key technical ingredient on the algorithmic side is a query-efficient local list corrector. For the lower bound, we give a reduction from communication complexity using a novel subclass of Maiorana-McFarland functions from symmetric-key cryptography.

International audience

Given an Abelian group 𝒢, a Boolean-valued function f: 𝒢 → {-1,+1}, is said to be s-sparse, if it has at most s-many non-zero Fourier coefficients over the domain 𝒢. In a seminal paper, Gopalan et al. [Gopalan et al., 2011] proved "Granularity" for Fourier coefficients of Boolean valued functions over ℤ₂ⁿ, that have found many diverse applications in theoretical computer science and combinatorics. They also studied structural results for Boolean functions over ℤ₂ⁿ which are approximately Fourier-sparse. In this work, we obtain structural results for approximately Fourier-sparse Boolean valued functions over Abelian groups 𝒢 of the form, 𝒢: = ℤ_{p_1}^{n_1} × ⋯ × ℤ_{p_t}^{n_t}, for distinct primes p_i. We also obtain a lower bound of the form 1/(m²s)^⌈φ(m)/2⌉, on the absolute value of the smallest non-zero Fourier coefficient of an s-sparse function, where m = p_1 ⋯ p_t, and φ(m) = (p_1-1) ⋯ (p_t-1). We carefully apply probabilistic techniques from [Gopalan et al., 2011], to obtain our structural results, and use some non-trivial results from algebraic number theory to get the lower bound. We construct a family of at most s-sparse Boolean functions over ℤ_pⁿ, where p > 2, for arbitrarily large enough s, where the minimum non-zero Fourier coefficient is o(1/s). The "Granularity" result of Gopalan et al. implies that the absolute values of non-zero Fourier coefficients of any s-sparse Boolean valued function over ℤ₂ⁿ are Ω(1/s). So, our result shows that one cannot expect such a lower bound for general Abelian groups. Using our new structural results on the Fourier coefficients of sparse functions, we design an efficient sparsity testing algorithm for Boolean function, which tests whether the given function is s-sparse, or ε-far from any sparse Boolean function, and it requires poly((ms)^φ(m),1/ε)-many queries. Further, we generalize the notion of degree of a Boolean function over an Abelian group 𝒢. We use it to prove an Ω(√s) lower bound on the query complexity of any adaptive sparsity testing algorithm.