Related papers: Approximating the minimum length of synchronizing …
In this paper, we consider interpolation by \textit{completely monotonous} polynomials (CMPs for short), that is, polynomials with non-negative real coefficients. In particular, given a finite set $S\subset \mathbb{R}_{>0} \times…
We prove lower bounds on the length of regular expressions for finite languages by methods from arithmetic circuit complexity. First, we show a reduction: the length of a regular expression for a language $L\subseteq \{0,1\}^n$ is bounded…
We prove that weighted circuit satisfiability for monotone or antimonotone circuits has no fixed-parameter tractable approximation algorithm with any approximation ratio function $\rho$, unless $FPT\neq W[1]$. In particular, not having such…
We study the problem of approximating the cone of positive semidefinite (PSD) matrices with a cone that can be described by smaller-sized PSD constraints. Specifically, we ask the question: "how closely can we approximate the set of…
The approximate period recovery problem asks to compute all $\textit{approximate word-periods}$ of a given word $S$ of length $n$: all primitive words $P$ ($|P|=p$) which have a periodic extension at edit distance smaller than $\tau_p$ from…
We give a trichotomy theorem for the complexity of approximately counting the number of satisfying assignments of a Boolean CSP instance. Such problems are parameterised by a constraint language specifying the relations that may be used in…
Described are two algorithms to find long approximate palindromes in a string, for example a DNA sequence. A simple algorithm requires O(n)-space and almost always runs in $O(k.n)$-time where n is the length of the string and k is the…
The best algorithm for approximating Steiner tree has performance ratio $\ln(4)+\epsilon \approx 1.386$ [J. Byrka et al., \textit{Proceedings of the 42th Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC)}, 2010, pp. 583-592], whereas the…
The verification of reductions, representative subsets of interleavings, simplifies correctness proofs of parameterized concurrent programs. We introduce an expressive class of syntactic reductions, which we call natural reductions. Natural…
The Shortest Common Supersequence problem (SCS for short) consists in finding a shortest common supersequence of a finite set of words on a fixed alphabet Sigma. It is well-known that its decision version denoted [SR8] in [Garey and…
We show that it is $\mathsf{NP}$-hard to approximate the hyperspherical radius of a triangulated manifold up to an almost-polynomial factor.
We show that several problems of compacting orthogonal graph drawings to use the minimum number of rows, area, length of longest edge or total edge length cannot be approximated better than within a polynomial factor of optimal in…
A word w is called synchronizing (recurrent, reset, directed) word of a deterministic finite automaton (DFA) if w sends all states of the automaton on a unique state. Jan Cerny had found in 1964 a sequence of n-state complete DFA with…
We show that computing even very coarse approximations of critical points is intractable for simple classes of nonconvex functions. More concretely, we prove that if there exists a polynomial-time algorithm that takes as input a polynomial…
We study optimization problems that are neither approximable in polynomial time (at least with a constant factor) nor fixed parameter tractable, under widely believed complexity assumptions. Specifically, we focus on Maximum Independent…
We consider the \emph{smallest superpolyomino problem}: given a set of colored polyominoes, find the smallest polyomino containing each input polyomino as a subshape. This problem is shown to be NP-hard, even when restricted to a set of…
This thesis investigates the extent to which the optimal value of a constraint satisfaction problem (CSP) can be approximated by some sentence of fixed point logic with counting (FPC). It is known that, assuming $\mathsf{P} \neq…
We show that the problem of finding a Resolution refutation that is at most polynomially longer than a shortest one is NP-hard. In the parlance of proof complexity, Resolution is not automatizable unless P = NP. Indeed, we show it is…
We study the complexity of approximating the permanent of a positive semidefinite matrix $A\in \mathbb{C}^{n\times n}$. 1. We design a new approximation algorithm for $\mathrm{per}(A)$ with approximation ratio $e^{(0.9999 + \gamma)n}$,…
We present the first polynomial self-stabilizing algorithm for finding a $\frac23$-approximation of a maximum matching in a general graph. The previous best known algorithm has been presented by Manne \emph{et al.} \cite{ManneMPT11} and has…