A robust Khintchine inequality, and algorithms for computing optimal constants in Fourier analysis and high-dimensional geometry

Abstract

This paper makes two contributions towards determining some well-studied optimal constants in Fourier analysis \newa{of Boolean functions} and high-dimensional geometry. \begin{enumerate} \item It has been known since 1994 \cite{GL:94} that every linear threshold function has squared Fourier mass at least 1/2 on its degree-0 and degree-1 coefficients. Denote the minimum such Fourier mass by $\w^{\leq 1}[\ltf]$, where the minimum is taken over all $n$-variable linear threshold functions and all $n \ge 0$. Benjamini, Kalai and Schramm \cite{BKS:99} have conjectured that the true value of $\w^{\leq 1}[\ltf]$ is $2/\pi$. We make progress on this conjecture by proving that $\w^{\leq 1}[\ltf] \geq 1/2 + c$ for some absolute constant $c>0$. The key ingredient in our proof is a "robust" version of the well-known Khintchine inequality in functional analysis, which we believe may be of independent interest. \item We give an algorithm with the following property: given any $\eta > 0$, the algorithm runs in time $2^{\poly(1/\eta)}$ and determines the value of $\w^{\leq 1}[\ltf]$ up to an additive error of $\pm\eta$. We give a similar $2^{{\poly(1/\eta)}}$-time algorithm to determine \emph{Tomaszewski's constant} to within an additive error of $\pm \eta$; this is the minimum (over all origin-centered hyperplanes $H$) fraction of points in $\{-1,1\}^n$ that lie within Euclidean distance 1 of $H$. Tomaszewski's constant is conjectured to be 1/2; lower bounds on it have been given by Holzman and Kleitman \cite{HK92} and independently by Ben-Tal, Nemirovski and Roos \cite{BNR02}. Our algorithms combine tools from anti-concentration of sums of independent random variables, Fourier analysis, and Hermite analysis of linear threshold functions. \end{enumerate}