In the trace reconstruction problem, an unknown string $x$ of $n$ bits is observed through the deletion channel, which deletes each bit with some constant probability q, yielding a contracted string. How many independent outputs (traces) of the deletion channel are needed to reconstruct $x$ with high probability?
The best lower bound known is linear in $n$. Until recently, the best upper bound was exponential in the square root of $n$. We improve the square root to a cube root using statistics of individual output bits and some complex analysis; this bound is sharp for reconstruction algorithms that only use this statistical information. (Similar results were obtained independently and concurrently by De, O’Donnell and Servedio). If the string $x$ is random and q<1/2, we can show a subpolynomial number of traces suffices by comparison to a biased random walk. (Joint works with Fedor Nazarov, STOC 2017 and with Alex Zhai, FOCS 2017).
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