We prove that the quadratic polynomials modulo $3$ with the largest correlation with parity are unique up to permutation of variables and constant factors. As a consequence of our result, we completely characterize the smallest MAJ~$circ mbox{MOD}_3 circ { m AND}_2$ circuits that compute parity, where a MAJ~$circ mbox{MOD}_3 circ { m AND}_2$ circuit is one that has a majority gate as output, a middle layer of MOD$_3$ gates and a bottom layer of AND gates of fan-in $2$. We also prove that the sub-optimal circuits exhibit a stepped behavior: any sub-optimal circuits of this class that compute parity must have size at least a factor of $frac{2}{sqrt{3}}$ times the optimal size. This verifies, for the special case of $m=3$, two conjectures made by Due~{n}ez, Miller, Roy and Straubing (Journal of Number Theory, 2006) for general MAJ~$circ mathrm{MOD}_m circ { m AND}_2$ circuits for any odd $m$. The correlation and circuit bounds are obtained by studying the associated exponential sums, based on some of the techniques developed by Green (JCSS, 2004). We regard this as a step towards obtaining tighter bounds both for the $m ot = 3$ quadratic case as well as for higher degrees.
@InProceedings{green_et_al:DagSemProc.07411.7, author = {Green, Frederic and Roy, Amitabha}, title = {{Uniqueness of Optimal Mod 3 Circuits for Parity}}, booktitle = {Algebraic Methods in Computational Complexity}, pages = {1--15}, series = {Dagstuhl Seminar Proceedings (DagSemProc)}, ISSN = {1862-4405}, year = {2008}, volume = {7411}, editor = {Manindra Agrawal and Harry Buhrman and Lance Fortnow and Thomas Thierauf}, publisher = {Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik}, address = {Dagstuhl, Germany}, URL = {https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/DagSemProc.07411.7}, URN = {urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-13059}, doi = {10.4230/DagSemProc.07411.7}, annote = {Keywords: Circuit complexity, correlations, exponential sums} }
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