December 7, 2016

We consider the fundamental derandomization problem of deterministically finding a satisfying assignment to a CNF formula that has many satisfying assignments. We give a deterministic algorithm which, given an n-variable poly(n)-clause CNF formula F that has F-1(1)ε2n, runs in time nO~(loglogn)2 for ε1/\polylog(n) and outputs a satisfying assignment of F. Prior to our work the fastest known algorithm for this problem was simply to enumerate over all seeds of a pseudorandom generator for CNFs; using the best known PRGs for CNFs [DETT10], this takes time nΩ~(logn) even for constant ε. Joint work with Rocco Servedio.