The analytic rank of tensors and its applications

The analytic rank of a tensor, first defined by Gowers and Wolf in the context of higher-order Fourier analysis, is defined to be the logarithm of the bias of the tensor. We prove that it is a subadditive measure of rank: that is, the analytic rank of the sum of two tensors is at most the sum of their individual analytic ranks. This analytic property turns out to have surprising applications: (i) common roots of tensors are always positively correlated; and (ii) the slice rank and partition rank, which were defined recently in the resolution of the cap-set problem in Ramsey theory, can be replaced by the analytic rank.