English

The Littlewood-Offord Problem for Markov Chains

Combinatorics 2019-05-01 v1 Computational Complexity Probability

Abstract

The celebrated Littlewood-Offord problem asks for an upper bound on the probability that the random variable ϵ1v1++ϵnvn\epsilon_1 v_1 + \cdots + \epsilon_n v_n lies in the Euclidean unit ball, where ϵ1,,ϵn{1,1}\epsilon_1, \ldots, \epsilon_n \in \{-1, 1\} are independent Rademacher random variables and v1,,vnRdv_1, \ldots, v_n \in \mathbb{R}^d are fixed vectors of at least unit length.We extend many known results to the case that the ϵi\epsilon_i are obtained from a Markov chain, including the general bounds first shown by Erd\H{o}s in the scalar case and Kleitman in the vector case, and also under the restriction that the viv_i are distinct integers due to S\'ark\"ozy and Szemeredi. In all extensions, the upper bound includes an extra factor depending on the spectral gap. We also construct a pseudorandom generator for the Littlewood-Offord problem using similar techniques.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1904.13019,
  title  = {The Littlewood-Offord Problem for Markov Chains},
  author = {Shravas Rao},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1904.13019},
  year   = {2019}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-23T08:52:56.088Z