Sum-of-Squares Refutation Implies Planted Recovery for Semirandom CSPs

Abstract

We give a $n^{O(\ell)}$-time algorithm for solving semirandom planted instances of a $k$-ary Boolean constraint satisfaction problem (CSP) with $m \gtrsim \left(\frac{n}{\ell}\right)^{k/2} \ell \, \mathrm{polylog}(n)$ constraints, for any choice of the runtime parameter $\ell$. Up to $\mathrm{polylog}(n)$ factors, this matches the known runtime vs.\ number of constraints trade-off for refuting semirandom CSPs, as well as the trade-off for solving fully random planted CSPs. Prior work on designing algorithms for semirandom CSPs follows a high-level blueprint of decomposing the constraint hypergraph $\mathcal{H}$ of the instance into pieces, each with an explicit pseudorandom property that allows the standard algorithm for random CSPs to succeed on every piece. We depart considerably from this framework and instead implicitly \emph{learn} such a decomposition, without appealing directly to explicit properties such as expansion. More generally, we construct such a learning algorithm from the assumption that semirandom $k$-XOR has Sum-of-Squares certificates of refutation. This yields the broader implication that any Sum-of-Squares refutation algorithm for semirandom $k$-XOR gives a corresponding algorithm for solving semirandom planted CSPs, and instantiating this reduction with known Sum-of-Squares algorithms for refuting semirandom $k$-XOR gives our main algorithm. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first reduction from search to refutation for (semi)random CSPs.