Related papers: Tight Bounds on Subexponential Time Approximation …
Set Cover is a classic NP-hard problem; as shown by Slav\'{i}k (1997) the greedy algorithm gives an approximation ratio of $\ln n - \ln \ln n + \Theta(1)$. A series of works by Lund \& Yannakakis (1994), Feige (1998), Moshkovitz (2015) have…
We show, assuming the (randomized) Gap Exponential Time Hypothesis (Gap-ETH), that the following tasks cannot be done in $T(k) \cdot N^{o(k)}$-time for any function $T$ where $N$ denote the input size: - $\left(1 - \frac{1}{e} +…
This paper concerns proving almost tight (super-polynomial) running times, for achieving desired approximation ratios for various problems. To illustrate, the question we study, let us consider the Set-Cover problem with n elements and m…
We present a simple deterministic reduction which, assuming the Exponential Time Hypothesis ($\mathsf{ETH}$), yields tight lower bounds for approximating the parameterized Maximum Likelihood Decoding problem ($\mathsf{MLD}$) and the…
We consider the classic Set Cover problem in the data stream model. For $n$ elements and $m$ sets ($m\geq n$) we give a $O(1/\delta)$-pass algorithm with a strongly sub-linear $\tilde{O}(mn^{\delta})$ space and logarithmic approximation…
We give new upper and lower bounds for the {\em dynamic} set cover problem. First, we give a $(1+\epsilon) f$-approximation for fully dynamic set cover in $O(f^2\log n /\epsilon^5)$ (amortized) update time, for any $\epsilon > 0$, where $f$…
The $k$-ExactCover problem is a parameterized version of the ExactCover problem, in which we are given a universe $U$, a collection $S$ of subsets of $U$, and an integer $k$, and the task is to determine whether $U$ can be partitioned into…
Given an $n$-vertex bipartite graph $I=(S,U,E)$, the goal of set cover problem is to find a minimum sized subset of $S$ such that every vertex in $U$ is adjacent to some vertex of this subset. It is NP-hard to approximate set cover to…
In this paper we focus on problems which do not admit a constant-factor approximation in polynomial time and explore how quickly their approximability improves as the allowed running time is gradually increased from polynomial to…
In this paper, we develop new tools and connections for exponential time approximation. In this setting, we are given a problem instance and a parameter $\alpha>1$, and the goal is to design an $\alpha$-approximation algorithm with the…
An upper dominating set is a minimal dominating set in a graph. In the \textsc{Upper Dominating Set} problem, the goal is to find an upper dominating set of maximum size. We study the complexity of parameterized algorithms for \textsc{Upper…
It is well-known that an algorithm exists which approximates the NP-complete problem of Set Cover within a factor of ln(n), and it was recently proven that this approximation ratio is optimal unless P = NP. This optimality result is the…
We study optimization problems that are neither approximable in polynomial time (at least with a constant factor) nor fixed parameter tractable, under widely believed complexity assumptions. Specifically, we focus on Maximum Independent…
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…
The field of exact exponential time algorithms for NP-hard problems has thrived over the last decade. While exhaustive search remains asymptotically the fastest known algorithm for some basic problems, difficult and non-trivial exponential…
We show that for every positive $\epsilon > 0$, unless NP $\subset$ BPQP, it is impossible to approximate the maximum quadratic assignment problem within a factor better than $2^{\log^{1-\epsilon} n}$ by a reduction from the maximum label…
We show conditional lower bounds for well-studied #P-hard problems: (a) The number of satisfying assignments of a 2-CNF formula with n variables cannot be counted in time exp(o(n)), and the same is true for computing the number of all…
It has long been known, since the classical work of (Arora, Karger, Karpinski, JCSS~99), that \MC\ admits a PTAS on dense graphs, and more generally, \kCSP\ admits a PTAS on "dense" instances with $\Omega(n^k)$ constraints. In this paper we…
We present a series of almost settled inapproximability results for three fundamental problems. The first in our series is the subexponential-time inapproximability of the maximum independent set problem, a question studied in the area of…
We derive an upper bound on the number of models for exact satisfiability (XSAT) of arbitrary CNF formulas F. The bound can be calculated solely from the distribution of positive and negated literals in the formula. For certain subsets of…