On generalized corners and matrix multiplication

TL;DR

This paper investigates the size of sets avoiding certain geometric configurations, explores implications for the matrix multiplication exponent, and connects combinatorial bounds with algebraic group-theoretic approaches.

Contribution

It links bounds on geometric configuration sets to limitations on group-theoretic methods for improving matrix multiplication complexity.

Findings

Improved bounds on the size of sets avoiding corners.

Connections between geometric combinatorics and matrix multiplication exponents.

Identification of barriers to achieving mortized optimal matrix multiplication.

Abstract

Suppose that $S \subseteq [n]^2$ contains no three points of the form $(x,y), (x,y+\delta), (x+\delta,y')$, where $\delta \neq 0$. How big can $S$ be? Trivially, $n \le |S| \le n^2$. Slight improvements on these bounds are obtained from Shkredov's upper bound for the corners problem [Shk06], which shows that $|S| \le O(n^2/(\log \log n)^c)$ for some small $c > 0$, and a construction due to Petrov [Pet23], which shows that $|S| \ge \Omega(n \log n/\sqrt{\log \log n})$. Could it be that for all $\varepsilon > 0$, $|S| \le O(n^{1+\varepsilon})$? We show that if so, this would rule out obtaining $\omega = 2$ using a large family of abelian groups in the group-theoretic framework of Cohn, Kleinberg, Szegedy and Umans [CU03,CKSU05] (which is known to capture the best bounds on $\omega$ to date), for which no barriers are currently known. Furthermore, an upper bound of $O(n^{4/3 - \varepsilon})$ for any fixed $\varepsilon > 0$ would rule out a conjectured approach to obtain $\omega = 2$ of [CKSU05]. Along the way, we encounter several problems that have much stronger constraints and that would already have these implications.