English

The Reverse Littlewood--Offord problem of Erd\H{o}s

Probability 2024-12-31 v3 Combinatorics

Abstract

Let ϵ1,,ϵn\epsilon_{1},\ldots,\epsilon_{n} be a sequence of independent Rademacher random variables. We prove that there is a constant c>0c>0 such that for any unit vectors v1,,vnR2v_1,\ldots,v_n\in \mathbb{R}^2, Pr[ϵ1v1++ϵnvn22]cn.\Pr\left[||\epsilon_1 v_1+\ldots+\epsilon_n v_n||_2 \leq \sqrt{2}\right]\geq \frac{c}{n}. This resolves the only remaining conjecture from the seminal paper of Erd\H{o}s on the Littlewood--Offord problem, and it is sharp both in the sense that the constant 2\sqrt{2} cannot be reduced and that the magnitude n1n^{-1} is best possible. We also prove polynomial bounds for the analogous problem in higher dimensions.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2408.11034,
  title  = {The Reverse Littlewood--Offord problem of Erd\H{o}s},
  author = {Xiaoyu He and Tomas Juskevicius and Bhargav Narayanan and Sam Spiro},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2408.11034},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

15 pages; updated with reference to earlier work of Beck