Related papers: Improved Hardness for Cut, Interdiction, and Firef…
In hypergraphs, an edge that crosses a cut (i.e., a bipartition of nodes) can be split in several ways, depending on how many nodes are placed on each side of the cut. A cardinality-based splitting function assigns a nonnegative cost of…
We consider the Minimum-$(k,\rho)$-$\mathrm{Shortcut}$ problem ($\min(k,\rho)\text{-}\mathrm{Shortcut}$), where the goal is to find the smallest set of shortcut edges such that every vertex in a given graph can reach its $\rho$ closest…
The results of Raghavendra (2008) show that assuming Khot's Unique Games Conjecture (2002), for every constraint satisfaction problem there exists a generic semi-definite program that achieves the optimal approximation factor. This result…
We prove essentially tight lower bounds, conditionally to the Exponential Time Hypothesis, for two fundamental but seemingly very different cutting problems on surface-embedded graphs: the Shortest Cut Graph problem and the Multiway Cut…
Minimum $k$-Section denotes the NP-hard problem to partition the vertex set of a graph into $k$ sets of sizes as equal as possible while minimizing the cut width, which is the number of edges between these sets. When $k$ is an input…
We unconditionally prove that it is NP-hard to compute a constant multiplicative approximation to the QUANTUM MAX-CUT problem on an unweighted graph of constant bounded degree. The proof works in two stages: first we demonstrate a generic…
Austrin showed that the approximation ratio $\beta\approx 0.94016567$ obtained by the MAX 2-SAT approximation algorithm of Lewin, Livnat and Zwick (LLZ) is optimal modulo the Unique Games Conjecture (UGC) and modulo a Simplicity Conjecture…
Assuming the Unique Games Conjecture, we show strong inapproximability results for two natural vertex deletion problems on directed graphs: for any integer $k\geq 2$ and arbitrary small $\epsilon > 0$, the Feedback Vertex Set problem and…
In the Network Flow Interdiction problem an adversary attacks a network in order to minimize the maximum s-t-flow. Very little is known about the approximatibility of this problem despite decades of interest in it. We present the first…
The Euclidean $k$-means problem is a classical problem that has been extensively studied in the theoretical computer science, machine learning and the computational geometry communities. In this problem, we are given a set of $n$ points in…
The Edge Multicut problem is a classical cut problem where given an undirected graph $G$, a set of pairs of vertices $\mathcal{P}$, and a budget $k$, the goal is to determine if there is a set $S$ of at most $k$ edges such that for each…
A minimum $s$-$t$ cut in a hypergraph is a bipartition of vertices that separates two nodes $s$ and $t$ while minimizing a hypergraph cut function. The cardinality-based hypergraph cut function assigns a cut penalty to each hyperedge based…
We prove that Multicut in directed graphs, parameterized by the size of the cutset, is W[1]-hard and hence unlikely to be fixed-parameter tractable even if restricted to instances with only four terminal pairs. This negative result almost…
The Graph Pricing problem is among the fundamental problems whose approximability is not well-understood. While there is a simple combinatorial 1/4-approximation algorithm, the best hardness result remains at 1/2 assuming the Unique Games…
For an undirected edge-weighted graph $G$ and a set $R$ of pairs of vertices called pairs of terminals, a multicut is a set of edges such that removing these edges from $G$ disconnects each pair in $R$. We provide an algorithm computing a…
The MAX BISECTION problem seeks a maximum-size cut that evenly divides the vertices of a given undirected graph. An open problem raised by Austrin, Benabbas, and Georgiou is whether MAX BISECTION can be approximated as well as MAX CUT,…
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…
Uniform cost-distance Steiner trees minimize the sum of the total length and weighted path lengths from a dedicated root to the other terminals. They are applied when the tree is intended for signal transmission, e.g. in chip design or…
In the $k$-connected directed Steiner tree problem ($k$-DST), we are given an $n$-vertex directed graph $G=(V,E)$ with edge costs, a connectivity requirement $k$, a root $r\in V$ and a set of terminals $T\subseteq V$. The goal is to find a…
We present an undirected version of the recently introduced flow-augmentation technique: Given an undirected multigraph $G$ with distinguished vertices $s,t \in V(G)$ and an integer $k$, one can in randomized $k^{O(1)} \cdot (|V(G)| +…