Bivariate Linear Operator Codes

In this work ¹¹Find the full version here: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2411.16596., we present a generalization of the linear operator family of codes that captures many codes that achieve list decoding capacity. Linear operator (LO) codes were introduced by Bhandari, Harsha, Kumar, and Sudan [BHKS24] as a way to capture capacity-achieving codes. In their framework, a code is specified by a collection of linear operators that are applied to a message polynomial and then evaluated at a specified set of evaluation points. We generalize this idea in a way that can be applied to bivariate message polynomials, getting what we call bivariate linear operator (B-LO) codes. We show that bivariate linear operator codes capture even more capacity-achieving codes, including permuted product codes introduced by Berman, Shany, and Tamo [BST24]. These codes work with bivariate message polynomials, which is why our generalization is necessary to capture them as a part of the linear operator framework. Similarly to the initial paper on linear operator codes, we present sufficient conditions for a bivariate linear operator code to be list decodable. Using this characterization, we are able to derive the theorem characterizing list-decodability of LO codes as a specific case of our theorem for B-LO codes. We also apply this theorem to show that permuted product codes are list decodable up to capacity, thereby unifying this result with those of known list-decodable LO codes, including Folded ReedSolomon, Multiplicity, and Affine Folded Reed-Solomon codes.