Extractors in Paley graphs: a random model

Abstract

A well-known conjecture in analytic number theory states that for every pair of sets $X,Y\subset\mathbb{Z}/p\mathbb{Z}$, each of size at least $\log ^C p$ (for some constant $C$) we have that the number of pairs $(x,y)\in X\times Y$ such that $x+y$ is a quadratic residue modulo $p$ differs from $\frac12|X||Y|$ by $o\left(|X||Y|\right)$. We address the probabilistic analogue of this question, that is for every fixed $\delta>0$, given a finite group $G$ and $A\subset G$ a random subset of density $\frac12$, we prove that with high probability for all subsets $|X|,|Y|\geq \log ^{2+\delta} |G|$, the number of pairs $(x,y)\in X\times Y$ such that $xy\in A$ differs from $\frac12|X||Y|$ by $o\left(|X||Y|\right)$.