Related papers: Lower Bounding the AND-OR Tree via Symmetrization

We improve both upper and lower bounds for the distribution-free testing of monotone conjunctions. Given oracle access to an unknown Boolean function $f:\{0,1\}^n \rightarrow \{0,1\}$ and sampling oracle access to an unknown distribution…

We establish new hardness results for decision tree optimization problems, adding to a line of work that dates back to Hyafil and Rivest in 1976. We prove, under randomized ETH, superpolynomial lower bounds for two basic problems: given an…

We analyze two algorithms for approximating the general optimal transport (OT) distance between two discrete distributions of size $n$, up to accuracy $\varepsilon$. For the first algorithm, which is based on the celebrated Sinkhorn's…

We give a simple proof of the "tree-width duality theorem" of Seymour and Thomas that the tree-width of a finite graph is exactly one less than the largest order of its brambles.

In this paper, we present an elementary proof of the Bhatia-\v{S}emrl Theorem, utilizing the Minimax Theorem for bounded linear operators by Asplund and Ptak [1]. Some related results are also discussed.

This paper investigates the a-posteriori analysis of Branch-and-Bound~(BB) trees to extract structural information about the feasible region of mixed-binary linear programs. We introduce three novel outer approximations of the feasible…

The degrees of polynomials representing or approximating Boolean functions are a prominent tool in various branches of complexity theory. Sherstov recently characterized the minimal degree deg_{\eps}(f) among all polynomials (over the…

In a recent breakthrough result, Balliu et al. [FOCS'19] proved a deterministic $\Omega(\min(\Delta,\log n /\log \log n))$-round and a randomized $\Omega(\min(\Delta,\log \log n/\log \log \log n))$-round lower bound for the complexity of…

We show that any Algebraic Branching Program (ABP) computing the polynomial $\sum_{i = 1}^n x_i^n$ has at least $\Omega(n^2)$ vertices. This improves upon the lower bound of $\Omega(n\log n)$, which follows from the classical result of Baur…

We prove that any extended formulation that approximates the matching polytope on $n$-vertex graphs up to a factor of $(1+\varepsilon)$ for any $\frac2n \le \varepsilon \le 1$ must have at least $\binom{n}{{\alpha}/{\varepsilon}}$ defining…

The approximate degree of a Boolean function $f: \{-1, 1\}^n \to \{-1, 1\}$ is the minimum degree of a real polynomial that approximates $f$ to within error $1/3$ in the $\ell_\infty$ norm. In an influential result, Aaronson and Shi (J. ACM…

Comparison of Lasserre's measure--based bounds for polynomial optimization to bounds obtained by simulated annealing. We consider the problem of minimizing a continuous function $f$ over a compact set $\mathbf{K}$. We compare the hierarchy…

In this paper we provide an approximation \`a la Ambrosio-Tortorelli of some classical minimization problems involving the length of an unknown one-dimensional set, with an additional connectedness constraint, in dimension two. We introduce…

In this paper we prove lower bounds on randomized multiparty communication complexity, both in the \emph{blackboard model} (where each message is written on a blackboard for all players to see) and (mainly) in the \emph{message-passing…

We analyze Kumar's recent quadratic algebraic branching program size lower bound proof method (CCC 2017) for the power sum polynomial. We present a refinement of this method that gives better bounds in some cases. The lower bound relies on…

In 2009, Roeglin and Teng showed that the smoothed number of Pareto optimal solutions of linear multi-criteria optimization problems is polynomially bounded in the number $n$ of variables and the maximum density $\phi$ of the semi-random…

In section 1 we give an improved lower bound on Hermite's constant $\delta_{2g}$ for symplectic lattices in even dimensions ($g=2n$) by applying a mean-value argument from the geometry of numbers to a subset of symmetric lattices. Here we…

We consider the minimum spanning tree (MST) problem under the restriction that for every vertex v, the edges of the tree that are adjacent to v satisfy a given family of constraints. A famous example thereof is the classical…

Given a lattice $\Lambda \subset \mathbb{R}^n$, we consider its Minkowski reduced basis and the solid angle $\Omega$ spanned by the basis vectors. Such a basis satisfies strong near-orthogonality conditions, which allow us to bound from…

Very recently, Khoury and Schild [FOCS 2025] showed that any randomized LOCAL algorithm that solves maximal matching requires $\Omega(\min\{\log \Delta, \log_\Delta n\})$ rounds, where $n$ is the number of nodes in the graph and $\Delta$ is…