Related papers: Hypercontractivity, Sum-of-Squares Proofs, and the…

We give an algorithm for solving unique games (UG) instances whenever low-degree sum-of-squares proofs certify good bounds on the small-set-expansion of the underlying constraint graph via a hypercontractive inequality. Our algorithm is in…

We study the complexity of affine Unique-Games (UG) over globally hypercontractive graphs, which are graphs that are not small set expanders but admit a useful and succinct characterization of all small sets that violate the small-set…

In order to obtain the best-known guarantees, algorithms are traditionally tailored to the particular problem we want to solve. Two recent developments, the Unique Games Conjecture (UGC) and the Sum-of-Squares (SOS) method, surprisingly…

We study the problem of computing the $p\rightarrow q$ norm of a matrix $A \in R^{m \times n}$, defined as \[ \|A\|_{p\rightarrow q} ~:=~ \max_{x \,\in\, R^n \setminus \{0\}} \frac{\|Ax\|_q}{\|x\|_p} \] This problem generalizes the spectral…

The vertex cover problem is one of the most important and intensively studied combinatorial optimization problems. Khot and Regev (2003) proved that the problem is NP-hard to approximate within a factor $2 - \epsilon$, assuming the Unique…

Conjunctive query (CQ) evaluation is NP-complete, but becomes tractable for fragments of bounded hypertreewidth. Approximating a hard CQ by a query from such a fragment can thus allow for an efficient approximate evaluation. While…

The expressivity of Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) is dependent on the aggregation functions they employ. Theoretical works have pointed towards Sum aggregation GNNs subsuming every other GNNs, while certain practical works have observed a…

Covering spaces of graphs have long been useful for studying expanders (as "graph lifts") and unique games (as the "label-extended graph"). In this paper we advocate for the thesis that there is a much deeper relationship between…

In this paper, we develop a quantitative inverse theory for the Gowers uniformity norm $\|\cdot\|_{\mathsf{U}^4}$ in general finite abelian groups. We identify a new type of obstructions to uniformity, which we call almost-cubic…

We investigate the uniform approximation provided by least squares polynomials on the unit Euclidean sphere $\mathbb{S}^q$ in $\mathbb{R}^{q+1}$, with $q\ge 2$. Like any other polynomial projection, the study concerns the growth, as the…

The degree-$4$ Sum-of-Squares (SoS) SDP relaxation is a powerful algorithm that captures the best known polynomial time algorithms for a broad range of problems including MaxCut, Sparsest Cut, all MaxCSPs and tensor PCA. Despite being an…

The $2 \rightarrow q$ norm of a matrix $X \in \mathbb{R}^{n \times d}$ is defined as $\lVert X \rVert_{2 \rightarrow q} = \sup_{\lVert v \rVert_2 = 1} \lVert Xv \rVert_q$. We give polynomial-time multiplicative approximation algorithms for…

This paper presents a novel systematic methodology to obtain new simple and tight approximations, lower bounds, and upper bounds for the Gaussian Q-function, and functions thereof, in the form of a weighted sum of exponential functions.…

We show that the value of a general two-prover quantum game cannot be computed by a semi-definite program ofvpolynomial size (unless P=NP), a method that has been successful in more restricted quantum games. More precisely, we show that…

We study how well functions over the boolean hypercube of the form $f_k(x)=(|x|-k)(|x|-k-1)$ can be approximated by sums of squares of low-degree polynomials, obtaining good bounds for the case of approximation in $\ell_{\infty}$-norm as…

Several works have shown unconditional hardness (via integrality gaps) of computing equilibria using strong hierarchies of convex relaxations. Such results however only apply to the problem of computing equilibria that optimize a certain…

We consider the problem of approximately solving constraint satisfaction problems with arity $k > 2$ ($k$-CSPs) on instances satisfying certain expansion properties, when viewed as hypergraphs. Random instances of $k$-CSPs, which are also…

We develop a new approach for approximating large independent sets when the input graph is a one-sided spectral expander - that is, the uniform random walk matrix of the graph has its second eigenvalue bounded away from 1. Consequently, we…

We prove that with high probability over the choice of a random graph $G$ from the Erd\H{o}s-R\'enyi distribution $G(n,1/2)$, the $n^{O(d)}$-time degree $d$ Sum-of-Squares semidefinite programming relaxation for the clique problem will give…

Motivated by the well known four-thirds conjecture for the traveling salesman problem (TSP), we study the problem of {\em uniform covers}. A graph $G=(V,E)$ has an $\alpha$-uniform cover for TSP (2EC, respectively) if the everywhere…