Related papers: Approximating the minimum length of synchronizing …
We show that unless P=NP, there cannot be a polynomial-time algorithm that finds a point within Euclidean distance $c^n$ (for any constant $c \ge 0$) of a local minimizer of an $n$-variate quadratic function over a polytope. This result…
This paper is our third step towards developing a theory of testing monomials in multivariate polynomials and concentrates on two problems: (1) How to compute the coefficients of multilinear monomials; and (2) how to find a maximum…
In this paper we consider the $p$-Norm Hamming Centroid problem which asks to determine whether some given binary strings have a centroid with a bound on the $p$-norm of its Hamming distances to the strings. Specifically, given a set of…
The prefix palindromic length $p_{\mathbf{u}}(n)$ of an infinite word $\mathbf{u}$ is the minimal number of concatenated palindromes needed to express the prefix of length $n$ of $\mathbf{u}$. This function is surprisingly difficult to…
We study the approximability of two related problems on graphs with $n$ nodes and $m$ edges: $n$-Pairs Shortest Paths ($n$-PSP), where the goal is to find a shortest path between $O(n)$ prespecified pairs, and All Node Shortest Cycles…
In the Shortest-Superstring problem, we are given a set of strings S and want to find a string that contains all strings in S as substrings and has minimum length. This is a classical problem in approximation and the best known…
Capacitated k-median is one of the few outstanding optimization problems for which the existence of a polynomial time constant factor approximation algorithm remains an open problem. In a series of recent papers algorithms producing…
We show that for several variations of partially observable Markov decision processes, polynomial-time algorithms for finding control policies are unlikely to or simply don't have guarantees of finding policies within a constant factor or a…
Makespan minimization on unrelated machines is a classic problem in approximation algorithms. No polynomial time $(2-\delta)$-approximation algorithm is known for the problem for constant $\delta> 0$. This is true even for certain special…
Set Cover is a classic NP-hard problem; as shown by Slav\'{i}k (1997) the greedy algorithm gives an approximation ratio of $\ln n - \ln \ln n + \Theta(1)$. A series of works by Lund \& Yannakakis (1994), Feige (1998), Moshkovitz (2015) have…
The constrained synchronization problem (CSP) asks for a synchronizing word of a given input automaton contained in a regular set of constraints. It could be viewed as a special case of synchronization of a discrete event system under…
In this note, we consider the problem of choosing which nodes of a linear dynamical system should be actuated so that the state transfer from the system's initial condition to a given final state is possible. Assuming a standard complexity…
We prove constant degree polynomial algorithms cannot optimize pure spherical $p$-spin Hamiltonians beyond the algorithmic threshold $\mathsf{ALG}(p)=2\sqrt{\frac{p-1}{p}}$. The proof goes by transforming any hypothetical such algorithm…
We show that computing the minimum rank of a sign pattern matrix is NP hard. Our proof is based on a simple but useful connection between minimum ranks of sign pattern matrices and the stretchability problem for pseudolines arrangements. In…
We study a connection between synchronizing automata and its set $M$ of minimal reset words, i.e., such that no proper factor is a reset word. We first show that any synchronizing automaton having the set of minimal reset words whose set of…
In this paper we investigate careful synchronization of one-cluster partial automata. First we prove that in general case the shortest carefully synchronizing word for such automata is of length $2^\frac{n}{2} + 1$, where $n$ is the number…
This paper situates itself in the theory of variable length codes and of finite automata where the concepts of completeness and synchronization play a central role. In this theoretical setting, we investigate the problem of finding upper…
In the constrained synchronization problem we ask if a given automaton admits a synchronizing word coming from a fixed regular constraint language. We show that intersecting a given constraint language with an ideal language decreases the…
The sparse polynomial approximation of continuous functions has emerged as a prominent area of interest in function approximation theory in recent years. A key challenge within this domain is the accurate estimation of approximation errors.…
It was conjectured by \v{C}ern\'y in 1964, that a synchronizing DFA on $n$ states always has a synchronizing word of length at most $(n-1)^2$, and he gave a sequence of DFAs for which this bound is reached. Until now a full analysis of all…