We give two new characterizations of (smooth, $\F_2$-linear) locally testable error-correcting codes in terms of Cayley graphs over $\F_2^h$:

\begin{enumerate}
\item A locally testable code is equivalent to a Cayley graph over $\F_2^h$ whose set of generators is significantly larger than $h$ and has no short linear dependencies, but yields a shortest-path metric that embeds into $\ell_1$ with constant distortion. This extends and gives a converse to a result of Khot and Naor (2006), which showed that codes with large dual distance imply Cayley graphs that have no low-distortion embeddings into $\ell_1$.

\item A locally testable code is equivalent to a Cayley graph over $\F_2^h$ that has significantly more than $h$ eigenvalues near 1, which have no short linear dependencies among them and which ``explain'' all of the large eigenvalues. This extends and gives a converse to a recent construction of Barak et al. (2012), which showed that locally testable codes imply Cayley graphs that are small-set expanders but have many large eigenvalues.

\end{enumerate}

The introduction and Appendix A in this revision clarifies and formalizes the relation between smooth testers (to which our results apply) and testers with bounded query complexity, correcting an error pointed out by Or Meir.

We give two new characterizations of ($\F_2$-linear) locally testable error-correcting codes in terms of Cayley graphs over $\F_2^h$:

\begin{enumerate}
\item A locally testable code is equivalent to a Cayley graph over $\F_2^h$ whose set of generators is significantly larger than $h$ and has no short linear dependencies, but yields a shortest-path metric that embeds into $\ell_1$ with constant distortion. This extends and gives a converse to a result of Khot and Naor (2006), which showed that codes with large dual distance imply Cayley graphs that have no low-distortion embeddings into $\ell_1$.

\item A locally testable code is equivalent to a Cayley graph over $\F_2^h$ that has significantly more than $h$ eigenvalues near 1, which have no short linear dependencies among them and which ``explain'' all of the large eigenvalues. This extends and gives a converse to a recent construction of Barak et al. (2012), which showed that locally testable codes imply Cayley graphs that are small-set expanders but have many large eigenvalues.

\end{enumerate}