Sharper bounds on the Fourier concentration of DNFs


Abstract in English

In 1992 Mansour proved that every size-$s$ DNF formula is Fourier-concentrated on $s^{O(loglog s)}$ coefficients. We improve this to $s^{O(loglog k)}$ where $k$ is the read number of the DNF. Since $k$ is always at most $s$, our bound matches Mansours for all DNFs and strengthens it for small-read ones. The previous best bound for read-$k$ DNFs was $s^{O(k^{3/2})}$. For $k$ up to $tilde{Theta}(loglog s)$, we further improve our bound to the optimal $mathrm{poly}(s)$; previously no such bound was known for any $k = omega_s(1)$. Our techniques involve new connections between the term structure of a DNF, viewed as a set system, and its Fourier spectrum.

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