The original inverse Gowers conjecture

From papers

Let p2p\geq 2 be a fixed prime, let d1d\geq 1, and let F:FpnCF:\mathbb{F}_p^n\to\mathbb{C} be a bounded function with F1\|F\|_{\infty}\leq 1. If its Gowers norm satisfies

FUd+1ε,\|F\|_{U^{d+1}}\geq\varepsilon,

then there exists a degree-dd polynomial P:FpnFpP:\mathbb{F}_p^n\to\mathbb{F}_p such that

F,e2πiP/pδ(p,d,ε).\left|\left\langle F,e^{2\pi iP/p}\right\rangle\right|\geq\delta(p,d,\varepsilon).

Original inverse Gowers conjecture. For every such FF, a lower bound on the Ud+1U^{d+1} norm implies correlation with a phase polynomial of degree dd, with correlation bounded below by a positive quantity depending only on pp, dd, and ε\varepsilon. This is the inverse problem for the Gowers norm: large uniformity norm should reveal low-degree polynomial structure. The precise validity and dependence of the bound are not established here.

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Sources & referencesView supporting material

Primary source

En-Jui Kuo, “Quantum Algorithms for Gowers Norm Estimation, Polynomial Testing, and Arithmetic Progression Counting over Finite Abelian Groups”, arXiv:2508.01231 (2025).

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