Smoothed Analysis of the Koml\'os Conjecture: Rademacher Noise

TL;DR

This paper proves that the discrepancy of a Komlós matrix with Rademacher noise is bounded by O(d^{-1/2}) under optimal conditions, advancing the understanding of smoothed analysis in discrepancy theory.

Contribution

It establishes the first optimal dependency result for Rademacher noise in the smoothed analysis of the Komlós conjecture, improving previous Gaussian-based results.

Findings

Discrepancy bound of O(d^{-1/2}) with Rademacher noise

Optimal dependency n = ω(d log d) achieved

Extends smoothed analysis to discrete noise types

Abstract

The {\em discrepancy} of a matrix $M \in \mathbb{R}^{d \times n}$ is given by $\mathrm{DISC}(M) := \min_{\boldsymbol{x} \in \{-1,1\}^n} \|M\boldsymbol{x}\|_\infty$. An outstanding conjecture, attributed to Koml\'os, stipulates that $\mathrm{DISC}(M) = O(1)$, whenever $M$ is a Koml\'os matrix, that is, whenever every column of $M$ lies within the unit sphere. Our main result asserts that $\mathrm{DISC}(M + R/\sqrt{d}) = O(d^{-1/2})$ holds asymptotically almost surely, whenever $M \in \mathbb{R}^{d \times n}$ is Koml\'os, $R \in \mathbb{R}^{d \times n}$ is a Rademacher random matrix, $d = \omega(1)$, and $n = \omega(d \log d)$. The factor $d^{-1/2}$ normalising $R$ is essentially best possible and the dependency between $n$ and $d$ is asymptotically best possible. Our main source of inspiration is a result by Bansal, Jiang, Meka, Singla, and Sinha (ICALP 2022). They obtained an assertion similar to the one above in the case that the smoothing matrix is Gaussian. They asked whether their result can be attained with the optimal dependency $n = \omega(d \log d)$ in the case of Bernoulli random noise or any other types of discretely distributed noise; the latter types being more conducive for Smoothed Analysis in other discrepancy settings such as the Beck-Fiala problem. For Bernoulli noise, their method works if $n = \omega(d^2)$. In the case of Rademacher noise, we answer the question posed by Bansal, Jiang, Meka, Singla, and Sinha. Our proof builds upon their approach in a strong way and provides a discrete version of the latter. Breaking the $n = \omega(d^2)$ barrier and reaching the optimal dependency $n = \omega(d \log d)$ for Rademacher noise requires additional ideas expressed through a rather meticulous counting argument, incurred by the need to maintain a high level of precision all throughout the discretisation process.