Sign uncertainty principles and low-degree polynomials

Abstract

We prove an asymptotically sharp version of the Bourgain–Clozel–Kahane and Cohn–Gonçalves sign uncertainty principles for polynomials of sublinear degree times a Gaussian, as the dimension tends to infinity. In particular, we show that polynomials whose degree is sublinear in the dimension cannot improve asymptotically on those of degree at most three. This question arises naturally in the study of both linear programming bounds for sphere packing and the spinless modular bootstrap bound for free bosons.