Related papers: Approximating the minimum length of synchronizing …
We study the hardness of approximation of clause minimum and literal minimum representations of pure Horn functions in $n$ Boolean variables. We show that unless P=NP, it is not possible to approximate in polynomial time the minimum number…
In this paper, we will find a pseudopolynomial algorithm to solve $Qm \mid \mid L_{\max}$ and then we will prove that it is impossible to get any constant-factor approximation in polynomial time, and thus also impossible to have a PTAS for…
We study the problems of finding a shortest synchronizing word and its length for a given prefix code. This is done in two different settings: when the code is defined by an arbitrary decoder recognizing its star and when the code is…
We show that for any rational p \in [1,\infty) except p = 1, 2, unless P = NP, there is no polynomial-time algorithm for approximating the matrix p-norm to arbitrary relative precision. We also show that for any rational p\in [1,\infty)…
The \v{C}ern\'y conjecture states that every $n$-state synchronizing automaton has a reset word of length at most $(n-1)^2$. We study the hardness of finding short reset words. It is known that the exact version of the problem, i.e.,…
In the Closest String problem one is given a family $\mathcal S$ of equal-length strings over some fixed alphabet, and the task is to find a string $y$ that minimizes the maximum Hamming distance between $y$ and a string from $\mathcal S$.…
A synchronizing word of a deterministic finite complete automaton is a word whose action maps every state to a single one. Finding a shortest or a short synchronizing word is a central computational problem in the theory of synchronizing…
Given a satisfiable 3-SAT formula, how hard is it to find an assignment to the variables that has Hamming distance at most n/2 to a satisfying assignment? More generally, consider any polynomial-time verifier for any NP-complete language. A…
It is well known that sparse approximation problem is \textsf{NP}-hard under general dictionaries. Several algorithms have been devised and analyzed in the past decade under various assumptions on the \emph{coherence} $\mu$ of the…
The minimum unsatisfiability version of a constraint satisfaction problem (MinCSP) asks for an assignment where the number of unsatisfied constraints is minimum possible, or equivalently, asks for a minimum-size set of constraints whose…
In this paper we consider two problems concerning string factorisation. Specifically given a string $w$ and an integer $k$ find a factorisation of $w$ where each factor has length bounded by $k$ and has the minimum (the FmD problem) or the…
We consider the hardness of approximation of optimization problems from the point of view of definability. For many NP-hard optimization problems it is known that, unless P = NP, no polynomial-time algorithm can give an approximate solution…
We prove that the Minimum Distance Problem (MDP) on linear codes over any fixed finite field and parameterized by the input distance bound is W[1]-hard to approximate within any constant factor. We also prove analogous results for the…
We prove that a uniformly random automaton with $n$ states on a 2-letter alphabet has a synchronizing word of length $O(n^{1/2}\log n)$ with high probability (w.h.p.). That is to say, w.h.p. there exists a word $\omega$ of such length, and…
We show that for every $k\in\mathbb{N}$ and $\varepsilon>0$, for large enough alphabet $R$, given a $k$-CSP with alphabet size $R$, it is NP-hard to distinguish between the case that there is an assignment satisfying at least…
We study the classical approximate string matching problem, that is, given strings $P$ and $Q$ and an error threshold $k$, find all ending positions of substrings of $Q$ whose edit distance to $P$ is at most $k$. Let $P$ and $Q$ have…
We study extremal and algorithmic questions of subset and careful synchronization in monotonic automata. We show that several synchronization problems that are hard in general automata can be solved in polynomial time in monotonic automata,…
We give simple deterministic reductions demonstrating the NP-hardness of approximating the nearest codeword problem and minimum distance problem within arbitrary constant factors (and almost-polynomial factors assuming NP cannot be solved…
Finding the minimum of a multivariate real polynomial is a well-known hard problem with various applications. We present a polynomial time algorithm to approximate such lower bounds via sums of nonnegative circuit polynomials (SONC). As a…
We consider the computational problem of finding short paths in the skeleton of the perfect matching polytope of a bipartite graph. We prove that unless $P=NP$, there is no polynomial-time algorithm that computes a path of constant length…