Forbidden Subgraph Bounds for Parallel Repetition and the Density Hales-Jewett Theorem

TL;DR

This paper explores forbidden subgraph bounds in parallel repetition of multi-prover games, linking them to the density Hales-Jewett theorem and introducing new techniques for exponential bounds.

Contribution

It establishes a connection between forbidden subgraph bounds and the density Hales-Jewett theorem, and develops a novel method for proving exponential bounds in certain cases.

Findings

Forbidden subgraph bounds imply bounds for the density Hales-Jewett theorem.

New technique for exponential forbidden subgraph bounds introduced.

Exponential bounds achieved for two-prover games with treewidth at most two.

Abstract

We study a special kind of bounds (so called forbidden subgraph bounds, cf. Feige, Verbitsky '02) for parallel repetition of multi-prover games. First, we show that forbidden subgraph upper bounds for $r \ge 3$ provers imply the same bounds for the density Hales-Jewett theorem for alphabet of size $r$. As a consequence, this yields a new family of games with slow decrease in the parallel repetition value. Second, we introduce a new technique for proving exponential forbidden subgraph upper bounds and explore its power and limitations. In particular, we obtain exponential upper bounds for two-prover games with question graphs of treewidth at most two and show that our method cannot give exponential bounds for all two-prover graphs.