Sunflowers and Testing Triangle-Freeness of Functions

A function $f: \mathbb{F}_2^n \rightarrow \{0,1\}$ is triangle-free if there are no $x_1,x_2,x_3 \in \mathbb{F}_2^n$ satisfying $x_1+x_2+x_3=0$ and $f(x_1)=f(x_2)=f(x_3)=1$. In testing triangle-freeness, the goal is to distinguish with high probability triangle-free functions from those that are $\varepsilon$-far from being triangle-free. It was shown by Green that the query complexity of the canonical tester for the problem is upper bounded by a function that depends only on $\varepsilon$ (GAFA, 2005), however the best known upper bound is a tower type function of $1/\varepsilon$. The best known lower bound on the query complexity of the canonical tester is $1/\varepsilon^{13.239}$ (Fu and Kleinberg, RANDOM, 2014). In this work we introduce a new approach to proving lower bounds on the query complexity of triangle-freeness. We relate the problem to combinatorial questions on collections of vectors in $\mathbb{Z}_D^n$ and to sunflower conjectures studied by Alon, Shpilka, and Umans (Comput. Complex., 2013). The relations yield that a refutation of the Weak Sunflower Conjecture over $\mathbb{Z}_4$ implies a super-polynomial lower bound on the query complexity of the canonical tester for triangle-freeness. Our results are extended to testing $k$-cycle-freeness of functions with domain $\mathbb{F}_p^n$ for every $k \geq 3$ and a prime $p$. In addition, we generalize the lower bound of Fu and Kleinberg to $k$-cycle-freeness for $k \geq 4$ by generalizing the construction of uniquely solvable puzzles due to Coppersmith and Winograd (J. Symbolic Comput., 1990).