Related papers: Near-Optimal Algorithms for Point-Line Covering Pr…
We prove the #P-hardness of the counting problems associated with various satisfiability, graph and combinatorial problems, when restricted to planar instances. These problems include \begin{romannum} \item[{}] {\sc 3Sat, 1-3Sat, 1-Ex3Sat,…
We present approximation algorithms for the following NP-hard optimization problems related to bottleneck spanning trees in metric spaces. 1. The disjoint bottleneck spanning tree problem: Given $n$ pairs of points in a metric space, find…
In the present paper, we study algorithmic questions for the arc-intersection graph of directed paths on a tree. Such graphs are known to be perfect (proved by Monma and Wei in 1986). We present faster algorithms than all previously known…
We initiate a systematic study of utilizing predictions to improve over approximation guarantees of classic algorithms, without increasing the running time. We propose a systematic method for a wide class of optimization problems that ask…
A kernelization algorithm for a computational problem is a procedure which compresses an instance into an equivalent instance whose size is bounded with respect to a complexity parameter. For the Boolean satisfiability problem (SAT), and…
Kernelization algorithms are polynomial-time reductions from a problem to itself that guarantee their output to have a size not exceeding some bound. For example, d-Set Matching for integers d>2 is the problem of finding a matching of size…
We initiate the study of the following natural geometric optimization problem. The input is a set of axis-aligned rectangles in the plane. The objective is to find a set of horizontal line segments of minimum total length so that every…
We study the problem of estimating the size of maximum matching and minimum vertex cover in sublinear time. Denoting the number of vertices by $n$ and the average degree in the graph by $\bar{d}$, we obtain the following results for both…
Finding a maximum clique in a given graph is one of the fundamental NP-hard problems. We compare two multi-core thread-parallel adaptations of a state-of-the-art branch and bound algorithm for the maximum clique problem, and provide a novel…
Given a graph, the general problem to cover the maximum number of vertices by a collection of vertex-disjoint long paths seemingly escapes from the literature. A path containing at least $k$ vertices is considered long. When $k \le 3$, the…
Given a graph $G=(V,E)$ and a positive integer $t\geq2$, the task in the vertex cover $P_t$ ($VCP_t$) problem is to find a minimum subset of vertices $F\subseteq V$ such that every path of order $t$ in $G$ contains at least one vertex from…
The (unweighted) point-separation problem asks, given a pair of points $s$ and $t$ in the plane, and a set of candidate geometric objects, for the minimum-size subset of objects whose union blocks all paths from $s$ to $t$. Recent work has…
Mixed packing and covering problems are problems that can be formulated as linear programs using only non-negative coefficients. Examples include multicommodity network flow, the Held-Karp lower bound on TSP, fractional relaxations of set…
$\delta$-Covering, for some covering range $\delta>0$, is a continuous facility location problem on undirected graphs where all edges have unit length. The facilities may be positioned on the vertices as well as on the interior of the…
Parallel fixed-parameter tractability studies how parameterized problems can be solved in parallel. A surprisingly large number of parameterized problems admit a high level of parallelization, but this does not mean that we can also…
We study the following two fixed-cardinality optimization problems (a maximization and a minimization variant). For a fixed $\alpha$ between zero and one we are given a graph and two numbers $k \in \mathbb{N}$ and $t \in \mathbb{Q}$. The…
In the classic maximum coverage problem, we are given subsets $T_1, \dots, T_m$ of a universe $[n]$ along with an integer $k$ and the objective is to find a subset $S \subseteq [m]$ of size $k$ that maximizes $C(S) := |\cup_{i \in S} T_i|$.…
We consider several problems that involve lines in three dimensions, and present improved algorithms for solving them. The problems include (i) ray shooting amid triangles in $R^3$, (ii) reporting intersections between query lines…
We present the first super-linear lower bounds for natural graph problems in the CONGEST model, answering a long-standing open question. Specifically, we show that any exact computation of a minimum vertex cover or a maximum independent set…
In the numerical linear algebra community, it was suggested that to obtain nearly optimal bounds for various problems such as rank computation, finding a maximal linearly independent subset of columns (a basis), regression, or low-rank…