In this work we use random walks on expanders in order to
relax the properties of hitting sets required for partially
derandomizing one-side error algorithms. Building on a well-known
probability amplification technique [AKS87,CW89,IZ89], we use
random walks on expander graphs of subexponential (in the
random bit complexity) size so as ... more >>>

A celebrated 1976 theorem of Aumann asserts that honest, rational
Bayesian agents with common priors will never "agree to disagree": if
their opinions about any topic are common knowledge, then those
opinions must be equal. Economists have written numerous papers
examining the assumptions behind this theorem. But two key questions
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Khot formulated in 2002 the "Unique Games Conjectures" stating that, for any epsilon > 0, given a system of constraints of a certain form, and the promise that there is an assignment that satisfies a 1-epsilon fraction of constraints, it is intractable to find a solution that satisfies even an ... more >>>

We introduce a "derandomized" analogue of graph squaring. This
operation increases the connectivity of the graph (as measured by the
second eigenvalue) almost as well as squaring the graph does, yet only
increases the degree of the graph by a constant factor, instead of
squaring the degree.

One application of ... more >>>

We construct a randomness-efficient averaging sampler that is computable by uniform constant-depth circuits with parity gates (i.e., in AC^0[mod 2]). Our sampler matches the parameters achieved by random walks on constant-degree expander graphs, allowing us to apply a variety expander-based techniques within NC^1. For example, we obtain the following results:

Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) is a kind of randomized search heuristic that has become very popular for solving problems from combinatorial optimization. Solutions for a given problem are constructed by a random walk on a so-called construction graph. This random walk can be influenced by heuristic information about the problem. ... more >>>

We consider the problem of testing graph expansion in the bounded degree model. We give a property tester that given a graph with degree bound $d$, an expansion bound $\alpha$, and a parameter $\epsilon > 0$, accepts the graph with high probability if its expansion is more than $\alpha$, and ... more >>>

We show the existence of rigid combinatorial objects which previously were not known to exist. Specifically, for a wide range of the underlying parameters, we show the existence of non-trivial orthogonal arrays, $t$-designs, and $t$-wise permutations. In all cases, the sizes of the objects are optimal up to polynomial overhead. ... more >>>