Related papers: Hardness Results for Approximate Pure Horn CNF For…
Given $k$ collections of 2SAT clauses on the same set of variables $V$, can we find one assignment that satisfies a large fraction of clauses from each collection? We consider such simultaneous constraint satisfaction problems, and design…
We give a reduction from {\sc clique} to establish that sparse PCA is NP-hard. The reduction has a gap which we use to exclude an FPTAS for sparse PCA (unless P=NP). Under weaker complexity assumptions, we also exclude polynomial…
While 3-SAT is NP-hard, 2-SAT is solvable in polynomial time. Austrin, Guruswami, and H\r{a}stad roved a result known as "$(2+\varepsilon)$-SAT is NP-hard" [FOCS'14/SICOMP'17]. They showed that the problem of distinguishing k-CNF formulas…
An NP-hard problem is considered of intersecting a given set of $n$ straight line segments on the plane with the smallest cardinality set of disks of fixed radii $r>0,$ where the set of segments forms a straight line drawing $G=(V,E)$ of a…
The seminar assignment problem is a variant of the generalized assignment problem in which items have unit size and the amount of space allowed in each bin is restricted to an arbitrary set of values. The problem has been shown to be…
We prove that unless P=NP, there exists no polynomial time (or even pseudo-polynomial time) algorithm that can test whether the optimal value of a nonlinear optimization problem where the objective and constraints are given by low-degree…
The first part of this report describes the following result that, logarithmic approximation factor for hard capacitated set cover can be achieved from Wolsey's work [9], using a simpler and more intuitive analysis. We further show in our…
We prove a PCP theorem for the existential theory of the reals, showing that MAX-ETR-INV is $\exists\mathbb{R}$-hard to approximate to within some constant factor. The existential theory of the reals (ETR) is a decision problem asking if…
In this paper, we study the tradeoff between the approximation guarantee and adaptivity for the problem of maximizing a monotone submodular function subject to a cardinality constraint. The adaptivity of an algorithm is the number of…
This is the latest in a series of articles aimed at exploring the relationship between the complexity classes of P and NP. In the previous papers, we have proved that the sat CNF problem is polynomially reduced to the problem of finding a…
We study the computational complexity of constrained nonnegative Gram feasibility. Given a partially specified symmetric matrix together with affine relations among selected entries, the problem asks whether there exists a nonnegative…
We show that approximating the trace norm contraction coefficient of a quantum channel within a constant factor is NP-hard. Equivalently, this shows that determining the optimal success probability for encoding a bit in a quantum system…
We show that every language in NP has a PCP verifier that tosses $O(\log n)$ random coins, has perfect completeness, and a soundness error of at most $1/\text{poly}(n)$, while making at most $O(\text{poly}\log\log n)$ queries into a proof…
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…
We consider the task of properly PAC learning decision trees with queries. Recent work of Koch, Strassle, and Tan showed that the strictest version of this task, where the hypothesis tree $T$ is required to be optimally small, is NP-hard.…
Discrete Morse theory has emerged as a powerful tool for a wide range of problems, including the computation of (persistent) homology. In this context, discrete Morse theory is used to reduce the problem of computing a topological invariant…
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…
Many problems are NP-hard and, unless P = NP, do not admit polynomial-time exact algorithms. The fastest known exact algorithms exactly usually take time exponential in the input size. Much research effort has gone into obtaining faster…
This paper is devoted to the complexity of the Boolean satisfiability problem. We consider a version of this problem, where the Boolean formula is specified in the conjunctive normal form. We prove an unexpected result that the…
We present an approximation notion for NP-hard optimization problems represented by binary functions. We prove that (assuming P != NP) the new notion is strictly stronger than FPTAS, but strictly weaker than having a polynomial-time…