Non‐Abelian homomorphism testing, and distributions close to their self‐convolutions

In this paper, we study two questions related to the problem of testing whether a function is close to a homomorphism. For two finite groups G,H (not necessarily Abelian), an arbitrary map f : G,H, and a parameter 0 < ε < 1, say that f is ε‐close to a homomorphism if there is some homomorphism g such that g and f differ on at most ε | G | elements of G, and say that f is ε‐far otherwise. For a given f and ε, a homomorphism tester should distinguish whether f is a homomorphism, or if f is ε‐far from a homomorphism. When G is Abelian, it was known that the test which picks O(1/ε) random pairs x,y and tests that f(x) + f(y) = f(x + y) gives a homomorphism tester. Our first result shows that such a test works for all groups G.