English

Optimal Streaming Approximations for all Boolean Max-2CSPs and Max-kSAT

Computational Complexity 2021-01-13 v4

Abstract

We prove tight upper and lower bounds on approximation ratios of all Boolean Max-2CSP problems in the streaming model. Specifically, for every type of Max-2CSP problem, we give an explicit constant α\alpha, s.t. for any ϵ>0\epsilon>0 (i) there is an (αϵ)(\alpha-\epsilon)-streaming approximation using space O(logn)O(\log{n}); and (ii) any (α+ϵ)(\alpha+\epsilon)-streaming approximation requires space Ω(n)\Omega(\sqrt{n}). This generalizes the celebrated work of [Kapralov, Khanna, Sudan SODA 2015; Kapralov, Krachun STOC 2019], who showed that the optimal approximation ratio for Max-CUT was 1/21/2. Prior to this work, the problem of determining this ratio was open for all other Max-2CSPs. Our results are quite surprising for some specific Max-2CSPs. For the Max-DCUT problem, there was a gap between an upper bound of 1/21/2 and a lower bound of 2/52/5 [Guruswami, Velingker, Velusamy APPROX 2017]. We show that neither of these bounds is tight, and the optimal ratio for Max-DCUT is 4/94/9. We also establish that the tight approximation for Max-2SAT is 2/2\sqrt{2}/2, and for Exact Max-2SAT it is 3/43/4. As a byproduct, our result gives a separation between space-efficient approximations for Max-2SAT and Exact Max-2SAT. This is in sharp contrast to the setting of polynomial-time algorithms with polynomial space, where the two problems are known to be equally hard to approximate. Finally, we prove that the tight streaming approximation for \mksat{} is 2/2\sqrt{2}/2 for every k2k\geq2.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2004.11796,
  title  = {Optimal Streaming Approximations for all Boolean Max-2CSPs and Max-kSAT},
  author = {Chi-Ning Chou and Alexander Golovnev and Santhoshini Velusamy},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2004.11796},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

Full version for the conference version appearing in FOCS 2020. Fix an error in the algorithm for Max-kSAT

R2 v1 2026-06-23T15:04:46.069Z