Related papers: Exact Covers via Determinants
It is a celebrated result in early combinatorics that, in bipartite graphs, the size of maximum matching is equal to the size of a minimum vertex cover. K\H{o}nig's proof of this fact gave an algorithm for finding a minimum vertex cover…
One of the most natural optimization problems is the k-Set Packing problem, where given a family of sets of size at most k one should select a maximum size subfamily of pairwise disjoint sets. A special case of 3-Set Packing is the well…
We introduce a new algebraic sieving technique to detect constrained multilinear monomials in multivariate polynomial generating functions given by an evaluation oracle. As applications of the technique, we show an $O^*(2^k)$-time…
Given an undirected graph, are there $k$ matchings whose union covers all of its nodes, that is, a matching-$k$-cover? A first, easy polynomial solution from matroid union is possible, as already observed by Wang, Song and Yuan…
We present a packing-based approximation algorithm for the $k$-Set Cover problem. We introduce a new local search-based $k$-set packing heuristic, and call it Restricted $k$-Set Packing. We analyze its tight approximation ratio via a…
Kernelization algorithms are polynomial-time reductions from a problem to itself that guarantee their output to have a size not exceeding some bound. For example, d-Set Matching for integers d>2 is the problem of finding a matching of size…
For any $\varepsilon > 0$, we prove that $k$-Dimensional Matching is hard to approximate within a factor of $k/(12 + \varepsilon)$ for large $k$ unless $\textsf{NP} \subseteq \textsf{BPP}$. Listed in Karp's 21 $\textsf{NP}$-complete…
Many NP-hard problems, such as Dominating Set, are FPT parameterized by clique-width. For graphs of clique-width $k$ given with a $k$-expression, Dominating Set can be solved in $4^k n^{O(1)}$ time. However, no FPT algorithm is known for…
The Ordered Covering Problem (OCP) arises in the context of the Discretizable Molecular Distance Geometry Problem (DMDGP), where the ordering of pruning edges significantly impacts the performance of the SBBU algorithm for protein structure…
We study the fair k-set selection problem where we aim to select $k$ sets from a given set system such that the (weighted) occurrence times that each element appears in these $k$ selected sets are balanced, i.e., the maximum (weighted)…
In the EDGE CLIQUE COVER (ECC) problem, given a graph G and an integer k, we ask whether the edges of G can be covered with k complete subgraphs of G or, equivalently, whether G admits an intersection model on k-element universe. Gramm et…
We give new positive results on the long-standing open problem of geometric covering decomposition for homothetic polygons. In particular, we prove that for any positive integer k, every finite set of points in R^3 can be colored with k…
In the Set Cover problem, we are given a set system with each set having a weight, and we want to find a collection of sets that cover the universe, whilst having low total weight. There are several approaches known (based on greedy…
In the $k$-cut problem, we are given an edge-weighted graph $G$ and an integer $k$, and have to remove a set of edges with minimum total weight so that $G$ has at least $k$ connected components. The current best algorithms are an…
Chv\'{a}tal and Klincsek (1980) gave an $O(n^3)$-time algorithm for the problem of finding a maximum-cardinality convex subset of an arbitrary given set $P$ of $n$ points in the plane. This paper examines a generalization of the problem,…
For a set of n points in the plane, we consider the axis--aligned (p,k)-Box Covering problem: Find p axis-aligned, pairwise-disjoint boxes that together contain n-k points. In this paper, we consider the boxes to be either squares or…
The Hidden Subset Sum Problem (HSSP) is a significant NP-complete problem in number theory and combinatorics, with applications in cryptography and AI privacy. For the $(n,k)$-complete HSSP, where a target multiset must be recovered from…
Capacitated Vertex Cover is the hard-capacitated variant of Vertex Cover: given a graph, a capacity for every vertex, and an integer $k$, the task is to select at most $k$ vertices that cover all edges and assign each edge to one of its…
We show that a $k$-fold covering using translates of an arbitrary convex polygon can be decomposed into $\Omega(k)$ covers (using an efficient algorithm). We generalize this result to obtain a constant factor approximation to the sensor…
We investigate the complexity of several fundamental polynomial-time solvable problems on graphs and on matrices, when the given instance has low treewidth; in the case of matrices, we consider the treewidth of the graph formed by non-zero…