Testing Isomorphism of Boolean Functions over Finite Abelian Groups

Abstract

Let f and g be Boolean functions over a finite Abelian group 𝒢, where g is fully known and f is accessible via queries; that is, given any x ∈ 𝒢, we can obtain the value f(x). We study the problem of tolerant isomorphism testing: given parameters ε ≥ 0 and τ > 0, the goal is to determine, using as few queries as possible, whether there exists an automorphism σ of 𝒢 such that the fractional Hamming distance between f∘σ and g is at most ε, or whether for every automorphism σ, the distance is at least ε + τ.
We design an efficient tolerant property testing algorithm for this problem over finite Abelian groups with constant exponent. The exponent of a finite group refers to the largest order of any element in the group. The query complexity of our algorithm is polynomial in s and 1/τ, where s bounds the spectral norm of the function g, and τ is the tolerance parameter. In addition, we present an improved algorithm in the case where g is Fourier sparse, meaning that its Fourier expansion contains only a small number of nonzero coefficients.
Our approach draws on key ideas from Abelian group theory and Fourier analysis, including the annihilator of a subgroup, Pontryagin duality, and a pseudo inner product defined over finite Abelian groups. We believe that these techniques will be useful more broadly in the design of property testing algorithms.