Quasihomomorphisms from the integers into Hamming metrics

Abstract

A function $f:\mathbb{Z}\to {\mathbb{Q}}^n$ is a $c$-quasihomomorphism if the Hamming distance between $f(x+y)$ and $f(x)+f(y)$ is at most $c$ for all $x,y\in \mathbb{Z}$. We show that any $c$-quasihomomorphism has distance at most some constant $C(c)$ to an actual group homomorphism; here $C(c)$ depends only on $c$ and not on $n$ or $f$. This gives a positive answer to a special case of a question posed by Kazhdan and Ziegler.

9 pages, 1 figure, comments welcome