English

A Hal\'asz-type theorem for permutation anticoncentration

Combinatorics 2026-01-12 v1 Probability

Abstract

Given a set A={a1,,an}A=\{a_1,\ldots,a_n\} of real numbers and real coefficients b1,,bnb_1,\ldots,b_n, consider the distribution of the sum obtained by pairing the aia_i's with the bib_i's according to a uniformly random permutation. A recent theorem of Pawlowski shows that as soon as the coefficients are not all equal, this distribution is always spread out at scale n1n^{-1}: no single value can occur with probability larger than 12n/2+1\frac{1}{2\lceil n/2\rceil + 1}, and this bound is sharp in general. We show that stronger anticoncentration holds when the coefficients have additional diversity. We quantify the structure of the coefficient multiset by a simple statistic depending on its multiplicity profile, and prove that the maximum point mass of the permuted sum decays polynomially faster as this statistic grows. In particular, when the coefficients are all distinct we obtain a bound of n5/2+o(1)n^{-5/2+o(1)}, which can be regarded as an analogue of a classical theorem of Erd\H{o}s and Moser.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2601.06019,
  title  = {A Hal\'asz-type theorem for permutation anticoncentration},
  author = {Zach Hunter and Cosmin Pohoata and Daniel G. Zhu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.06019},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

9 pages

R2 v1 2026-07-01T08:58:05.252Z