Polynomial bound for partition rank in terms of analytic rank (Q2334613)

Let \(G_1, \ldots, G_k\) be vector spaces over a finite field \(\mathbb{F}\) and let \(\alpha\colon G_1 \times \cdots \times G_k \rightarrow \mathbb{F}\) be a multilinear form. The analytic rank of \(\alpha\) is defined as \[ -\log_{q}\mathbb{E}_{x_1 \in G_1, \ldots, x_k \in G_k} \chi(\alpha(x_1, \ldots ,x_k)), \] where \(q\) is the number of elements of \(\mathbb{F}\) and \(\chi\) is a non-trivial additive character of \(\mathbb{F}\). The analytic rank is denoted by \(\operatorname{arank}(\alpha)\). The author defines the partition rank, that is, \(\alpha\) is of partition rank \(1\) if there exists a nonempty set \(I \subset [k]\) and multilinear forms \(\beta\colon \prod_{i \in I} G_i \rightarrow \mathbb{F}\) and \(\gamma\colon \prod_{i \in [k] \setminus I} G_i \rightarrow \mathbb{F}\) such that \[ \alpha(x_1, \ldots, x_k) = \beta(x_i: i\in I)\, \gamma(x_i: i\in [k] \setminus I) \] for every \(x_1 \in G_1, \ldots ,x_k \in G_k\). Partition rank, \(\operatorname{prank}(\alpha)\) of \(\alpha\) is the least integer \(r\) such that \(\alpha\) is a sum of \(r\) multilinear forms of partition rank \(1\). We put \(\operatorname{prank}(0) = 0\). In this paper the author proves that for given \(k\), there exist constants \(C\), \(D\) such that \[\operatorname{prank}(\alpha) \le C(\operatorname{arank}(\alpha)^D + 1). \] He also sketches the proof of the following theorem. Consider a polynomial \(f: \mathbb{F}_{p}^{n} \rightarrow \mathbb{F}_{p}\) of degree \(d\). If \[ |\mathbb{E}_{x_1, \ldots, x_n\in \mathbb{F}} \chi(f(x_1, \ldots, x_n))| \ge c, \] then there exist polynomials of degree \(d - 1\) and a map \(g\colon \mathbb{F}_p^r \rightarrow \mathbb{F}_p\) such that \(f(x_1, \ldots, x_n) = g(f_1(x_1, \ldots, x_n), \ldots, f_r(x_1, \ldots, x_n))\) for every \(x_1, \ldots, x_n \in \mathbb{F}_p\), where \(r = O_{p,d,c^{-1}} (1)\). As a corollary, he proves a conjecture of \textit{D. Kazhdan} and \textit{T. Ziegler} [Properties of high rank subvarieties of affine spaces (2019; \url{arXiv:1902.00767})]. The argument of the proof of his main result is based on an inductive argument. Let \(k\) be the number of variables. First, the author proves a weak inverse theorem for maps of low analytic rank, which implies a strong inverse theorem for maps of low analytic rank. Furthermore, he proves an inner approximation theorem of varieties and a structure theorem about sets of dense columns of a variety. Applying these results for \(k-1\) variables, he gets a strong approximation result for the convolutions of the indicator function of a low codimensional variety for \(k\) variables, which implies a weak inverse theorem for maps of low analytic rank of \(k+1\) variables. The author notes that his main result was also proved by \textit{O. Janzer} [Low analytic rank implies low partition rank for tensors (2018; \url{arXiv:1809.10931}; Polynomial bound for the partition rank vs the analytic rank of tensors. (2019; \url{arXiv:1902.11207}, Discrete Anal. 2020, Paper No. 7-17 (2020)] independently and simultaneously, using a different argument.