Harmonicity and invariance on slices of the Boolean cube

© 2019, Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature. In a recent work with Kindler and Wimmer we proved an invariance principle for the slice for low-influence, low-degree harmonic multilinear polynomials (a polynomial in x1, … , xn is harmonic if it is annihilated by ∑i=1n∂∂xi). Here we p...

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Main Authors: Filmus, Yuval, Mossel, Elchanan
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Springer Science and Business Media LLC 2021
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/135873
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author Filmus, Yuval
Mossel, Elchanan
author_facet Filmus, Yuval
Mossel, Elchanan
author_sort Filmus, Yuval
collection MIT
description © 2019, Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature. In a recent work with Kindler and Wimmer we proved an invariance principle for the slice for low-influence, low-degree harmonic multilinear polynomials (a polynomial in x1, … , xn is harmonic if it is annihilated by ∑i=1n∂∂xi). Here we provide an alternative proof for general low-degree harmonic multilinear polynomials, with no constraints on the influences. We show that any real-valued harmonic multilinear polynomial on the slice whose degree is o(n) has approximately the same distribution under the slice and cube measures. Our proof is based on ideas and results from the representation theory of Sn, along with a novel decomposition of random increasing paths in the cube in terms of martingales and reverse martingales. While such decompositions have been used in the past for stationary reversible Markov chains, our decomposition is applied in a non-stationary non-reversible setup. We also provide simple proofs for some known and some new properties of harmonic functions which are crucial for the proof. Finally, we provide independent simple proofs for the known facts that (1) one cannot distinguish between the slice and the cube based on functions of o(n) coordinates and (2) Boolean symmetric functions on the cube cannot be approximated under the uniform measure by functions whose sum of influences is o(n).
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spelling mit-1721.1/1358732021-10-28T03:11:57Z Harmonicity and invariance on slices of the Boolean cube Filmus, Yuval Mossel, Elchanan © 2019, Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature. In a recent work with Kindler and Wimmer we proved an invariance principle for the slice for low-influence, low-degree harmonic multilinear polynomials (a polynomial in x1, … , xn is harmonic if it is annihilated by ∑i=1n∂∂xi). Here we provide an alternative proof for general low-degree harmonic multilinear polynomials, with no constraints on the influences. We show that any real-valued harmonic multilinear polynomial on the slice whose degree is o(n) has approximately the same distribution under the slice and cube measures. Our proof is based on ideas and results from the representation theory of Sn, along with a novel decomposition of random increasing paths in the cube in terms of martingales and reverse martingales. While such decompositions have been used in the past for stationary reversible Markov chains, our decomposition is applied in a non-stationary non-reversible setup. We also provide simple proofs for some known and some new properties of harmonic functions which are crucial for the proof. Finally, we provide independent simple proofs for the known facts that (1) one cannot distinguish between the slice and the cube based on functions of o(n) coordinates and (2) Boolean symmetric functions on the cube cannot be approximated under the uniform measure by functions whose sum of influences is o(n). 2021-10-27T20:29:44Z 2021-10-27T20:29:44Z 2019 2019-11-18T13:27:01Z Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/135873 en 10.1007/S00440-019-00900-W Probability Theory and Related Fields Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ application/pdf Springer Science and Business Media LLC arXiv
spellingShingle Filmus, Yuval
Mossel, Elchanan
Harmonicity and invariance on slices of the Boolean cube
title Harmonicity and invariance on slices of the Boolean cube
title_full Harmonicity and invariance on slices of the Boolean cube
title_fullStr Harmonicity and invariance on slices of the Boolean cube
title_full_unstemmed Harmonicity and invariance on slices of the Boolean cube
title_short Harmonicity and invariance on slices of the Boolean cube
title_sort harmonicity and invariance on slices of the boolean cube
url https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/135873
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AT mosselelchanan harmonicityandinvarianceonslicesofthebooleancube