LIPIcs.APPROX-RANDOM.2018.56.pdf
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We study correlation bounds and pseudorandom generators for depth-two circuits that consist of a SYM-gate (computing an arbitrary symmetric function) or THR-gate (computing an arbitrary linear threshold function) that is fed by S {AND} gates. Such circuits were considered in early influential work on unconditional derandomization of Luby, Velickovi{c}, and Wigderson [Michael Luby et al., 1993], who gave the first non-trivial PRG with seed length 2^{O(sqrt{log(S/epsilon)})} that epsilon-fools these circuits. In this work we obtain the first strict improvement of [Michael Luby et al., 1993]'s seed length: we construct a PRG that epsilon-fools size-S {SYM,THR} oAND circuits over {0,1}^n with seed length 2^{O(sqrt{log S})} + polylog(1/epsilon), an exponential (and near-optimal) improvement of the epsilon-dependence of [Michael Luby et al., 1993]. The above PRG is actually a special case of a more general PRG which we establish for constant-depth circuits containing multiple SYM or THR gates, including as a special case {SYM,THR} o AC^0 circuits. These more general results strengthen previous results of Viola [Viola, 2006] and essentially strengthen more recent results of Lovett and Srinivasan [Lovett and Srinivasan, 2011]. Our improved PRGs follow from improved correlation bounds, which are transformed into PRGs via the Nisan-Wigderson "hardness versus randomness" paradigm [Nisan and Wigderson, 1994]. The key to our improved correlation bounds is the use of a recent powerful multi-switching lemma due to Håstad [Johan Håstad, 2014].
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