English

On the linear complexity of subsets of $\mathbb{F}_p^n$ bounded $\textrm{VC}_2$-dimension

Combinatorics 2025-12-02 v1 Logic

Abstract

Previous work of the second author and Wolf showed that given a set AFpnA\subseteq \mathbb{F}_p^n of bounded VC2\textrm{VC}_2-dimension, there is a high rank quadratic factor B\mathcal{B} of bounded complexity such that AA is approximately equal to a union of atoms of B\mathcal{B}. That proof yielded bounds of tower type on the linear and quadratic complexities. It was later shown by the same authors that the quadratic complexity can be improved to logarithmic, however that proof provided no improvement on the linear component. In this paper we prove that the bound on the linear complexity can be improved to a triple exponential in the case of linear rank functions, and a quadruple exponential for polynomial rank functions of higher degree. Our strategy is based on the one developed by Gishboliner, Wigderson, and Shapira to prove the analogous result in the hypergraph setting. Step 1 is to prove a``cylinder" version of the quadratic arithmetic regularity lemma, which says that given a set AG=FpnA\subseteq G=\mathbb{F}_p^n, there is a partition of GG into atoms of (possibly distinct) quadratic factors of high rank and bounded complexity, so that most atoms in the partition are uniform with respect to the set AA, in the sense of a certain local U3U^3 norm. Step 2 is to show that if AA has bounded VC2\textrm{VC}_2-dimension, then it has density near 00 or 11 on all atoms which are uniform in the sense of Step 1. Step 1 relies on a recent local version of the U3U^3 inverse theorem due to Prendiville, and is necessarily phrased in terms of a local U3U^3 norm implicit in that paper. On the other hand, Step 2 relies on a counting lemma for a different local U3U^3 due to Terry and Wolf, which we prove here is approximately the same as the local U3U^3 norm used in Step 1.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2512.02001,
  title  = {On the linear complexity of subsets of $\mathbb{F}_p^n$ bounded $\textrm{VC}_2$-dimension},
  author = {Hannah Sheats and Caroline Terry},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.02001},
  year   = {2025}
}