On codes decoding a constant fraction of errors on the BSC

Using techniques and results from Kudekar et al. we strengthen the bounds on the weight distribution of linear codes achieving capacity on the BEC, which were shown by the first author. In particular, we show that for any doubly transitive binary linear code $C \subseteq \{0,1\}^n$ of rate $0 < R < 1$ with weight distribution $\left(a_0,...,a_n\right)$ holds $a_i \le 2^{o(n)} \cdot (1-R)^{-2 \ln 2 \cdot \min\{i, n-i\}}$. For doubly transitive codes with minimal distance at least $\Omega\left(n^c\right)$, $0 < c \le 1$, the error factor of $2^{o(n)}$ in this bound can be removed at the cost of replacing $1-R$ with a smaller constant $a = a(R,c) < 1- R$. Moreover, in the special case of Reed-Muller codes, due to the additional symmetries of these codes, this error factor can be removed at essentially no cost. This implies that for any doubly transitive code $C$ of rate $R$ with minimal distance at least $\Omega\left(n^c\right)$, there exists a positive constant $p = p(R,c)$ such that $C$ decodes errors on $\mathrm{BSC}(p)$ with high probability if $p < p(R,c)$. For doubly transitive codes of a sufficiently low rate (smaller than some absolute constant) the requirement on the minimal distance can be omitted, and hence this critical probability $p(R)$ depends only on $R$. Furthermore, $p(R) \rightarrow \frac12$ as $R \rightarrow 0$. In particular, a Reed-Muller code $C$ of rate $R$ decodes errors on $\mathrm{BSC}(p)$ with high probability if $$R ~<~ 1 - \big(4p(1-p)\big)^{\frac{1}{4 \ln 2}},$$ answering a question of Abbe, Hazla, and Nachum.