List-decoding and list-recovery of Reed-Solomon codes beyond the Johnson radius for any rate

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the existence of Reed-Solomon codes that can be list-decoded and list-recovered beyond the Johnson radius for any rate, with polynomial field size, advancing understanding of their decoding limits.

Contribution

It establishes the existence of RS codes beyond the Johnson radius for any rate, using code puncturing and linearity properties, with polynomial field size.

Findings

RS codes exist beyond the Johnson radius for any rate

RS codes can be list-decoded from radius 1-ε with constant list size

Results extend previous work on puncturing codes with large minimum distance

Abstract

Understanding the limits of list-decoding and list-recovery of Reed-Solomon (RS) codes is of prime interest in coding theory and has attracted a lot of attention in recent decades. However, the best possible parameters for these problems are still unknown, and in this paper, we take a step in this direction. We show the existence of RS codes that are list-decodable or list-recoverable beyond the Johnson radius for \emph{any} rate, with a polynomial field size in the block length. In particular, we show that for any $\epsilon\in (0,1)$ there exist RS codes that are list-decodable from radius $1-\epsilon$ and rate less than $\frac{\epsilon}{2-\epsilon}$, with constant list size. We deduce our results by extending and strengthening a recent result of Ferber, Kwan, and Sauermann on puncturing codes with large minimum distance and by utilizing the underlying code's linearity.