Related papers: Hypercontractivity, Sum-of-Squares Proofs, and the…
For $ q $, $ a $ integers such that $ a \geq 1 $, $ 1 < q $, $ (x, y) \in U $, $ U $ a neighborhood of the origin in $ \mathbb{R}^{2} $, we consider the operator $$ D_{x}^{2} + x^{2(q-1)} D_{y}^{2} + y^{2a} D_{y}^{2} . $$ Slightly modifying…
We consider the question of approximating Max 2-CSP where each variable appears in at most $d$ constraints (but with possibly arbitrarily large alphabet). There is a simple $(\frac{d+1}{2})$-approximation algorithm for the problem. We prove…
The long-standing Gaussian product inequality (GPI) conjecture states that $E [\prod_{j=1}^{n}X_j^{2m_j}]\geq\prod_{j=1}^{n}E[X_j^{2m_j}]$ for any centered Gaussian random vector $(X_1,\dots,X_n)$ and $m_1,\dots,m_n\in\mathbb{N}$. In this…
We propose an iterative algorithm for the numerical computation of sums of squares of polynomials approximating given data at prescribed interpolation points. The method is based on the definition of a convex functional $G$ arising from the…
We study a combinatorial problem called Minimum Maximal Matching, where we are asked to find in a general graph the smallest that can not be extended. We show that this problem is hard to approximate with a constant smaller than 2, assuming…
We prove that for every $D \in \N$, and large enough constant $d \in \N$, with high probability over the choice of $G \sim G(n,d/n)$, the \Erdos-\Renyi random graph distribution, the canonical degree $2D$ Sum-of-Squares relaxation fails to…
Succinct representations of a graph have been objects of central study in computer science for decades. In this paper, we study the operation called \emph{Distance Preserving Graph Contractions}, which was introduced by Bernstein et al.…
Performing inference in graphs is a common task within several machine learning problems, e.g., image segmentation, community detection, among others. For a given undirected connected graph, we tackle the statistical problem of exactly…
We study the complexity of approximating the vertex expansion of graphs $G = (V,E)$, defined as \[ \Phi^V := \min_{S \subset V} n \cdot \frac{|N(S)|}{|S| |V \backslash S|}. \] We give a simple polynomial-time algorithm for finding a subset…
We consider extensions of the Shannon relative entropy, referred to as $f$-divergences.Three classical related computational problems are typically associated with these divergences: (a) estimation from moments, (b) computing normalizing…
In this paper, we prove an almost-optimal hardness for Max $k$-CSP$_R$ based on Khot's Unique Games Conjecture (UGC). In Max $k$-CSP$_R$, we are given a set of predicates each of which depends on exactly $k$ variables. Each variable can…
Given a large data matrix $A\in\mathbb{R}^{n\times n}$, we consider the problem of determining whether its entries are i.i.d. with some known marginal distribution $A_{ij}\sim P_0$, or instead $A$ contains a principal submatrix $A_{{\sf…
We introduce a method for proving Sum-of-Squares (SoS)/ Lasserre hierarchy lower bounds when the initial problem formulation exhibits a high degree of symmetry. Our main technical theorem allows us to reduce the study of the positive…
The 2-Vertex-Connected Spanning Subgraph problem (2VCSS) is among the most basic NP-hard (Survivable) Network Design problems: we are given an (unweighted) undirected graph $G$. Our goal is to find a spanning subgraph $S$ of $G$ with the…
Let $G$ be a strongly connected directed graph. We consider the following three problems, where we wish to compute the smallest strongly connected spanning subgraph of $G$ that maintains respectively: the $2$-edge-connected blocks of $G$…
The Super-SAT or SSAT problem was introduced by Dinur et al.(2002,2003) to prove the NP-hardness of approximation of two popular lattice problems - Shortest Vector Problem(SVP) and Closest Vector Problem(CVP). They conjectured that SSAT is…
The Small-Set Expansion Hypothesis (Raghavendra, Steurer, STOC 2010) is a natural hardness assumption concerning the problem of approximating the edge expansion of small sets in graphs. This hardness assumption is closely connected to the…
Optimizing parameters of Two-Prover-One-Round Game (2P1R) is an important task in PCPs literature as it would imply a smaller PCP with the same or stronger soundness. While this is a basic question in PCPs community, the connection between…
We design approximation algorithms for Unique Games when the constraint graph admits good low diameter graph decomposition. For the ${\sf Max2Lin}_k$ problem in $K_r$-minor free graphs, when there is an assignment satisfying $1-\varepsilon$…
The uniform quadratic optimizatin problem (UQ) is a nonconvex quadratic constrained quadratic programming (QCQP) sharing the same Hessian matrix. Based on the second-order cone programming (SOCP) relaxation, we establish a new sufficient…