Worked solution: Huang's signed hypercube adjacency matrix proof of the sensitivity conjecture (2019)
A Boolean function takes bits of input and outputs one bit. Its sensitivity measures how many single-bit flips can change the output at a worst-case input, while its degree measures how complicated is when written as a polynomial. Nisan and Szegedy asked in 1992 whether a function with small must also have small .
Huang (2019, Introduction) studies the -dimensional hypercube graph , whose vertices are the binary strings in and whose edges join strings differing in exactly one coordinate. In 1988, Chung, Furedi, Graham and Seymour proved that every induced subgraph on more than half the vertices of has maximum degree at least , and they constructed an induced subgraph on exactly vertices whose maximum degree is only . Huang's paper closes the gap between these two bounds completely: Theorem 1.1 states that every induced subgraph of on at least vertices satisfies , matching the earlier construction exactly.
- Boolean function
- A function taking bits as input and producing one bit of output.
- Sensitivity
- The largest number of single-bit flips that change the value of at some input , maximised over all inputs .
- Degree
- Every Boolean function equals a unique multilinear real polynomial in its input bits; is the degree of that polynomial.
- Induced subgraph
- Given a vertex subset of a graph , the induced subgraph keeps exactly the edges of with both endpoints in .