Unique Decoding of Explicit $\epsilon$-balanced Codes Near the Gilbert-Varshamov Bound

Understand

The Gilbert-Varshamov bound (non-constructively) establishes the existence of binary codes of distance $1/2 -\epsilon$ and rate $\Omega(\epsilon^2)$ (where an upper bound of $O(\epsilon^2\log(1/\epsilon))$ is known).

• Ta-Shma [STOC 2017] gave an explicit construction of $\epsilon$-balanced binary codes, where any two distinct codewords are at a distance between $1/2 -\epsilon/2$ and $1/2+\epsilon/2$, achieving a near optimal rate of $\Omega(\epsilon^{2+\beta})$, where $\beta \to 0$ as $\epsilon \to 0$.
• We develop unique and list decoding algorithms for (essentially) the family of codes constructed by Ta-Shma.
• We prove the following results for $\epsilon$-balanced codes with block length $N$ and rate $\Omega(\epsilon^{2+\beta})$ in this family: - For all $\epsilon, \beta > 0$ there are explicit codes which can be uniquely decoded up to an error of half the minimum distance in time $N^{O_{\epsilon, \beta}(1)}$.