Related papers: Randomized and quantum query complexities of findi…
We consider the quantum query complexity of local search as a function of graph geometry. Given a graph $G = (V,E)$ with $n$ vertices and black box access to a function $f : V \to \mathbb{R}$, the goal is find a vertex $v$ that is a local…
We study the problem of \emph{local search} on a graph. Given a real-valued black-box function f on the graph's vertices, this is the problem of determining a local minimum of f--a vertex v for which f(v) is no more than f evaluated at any…
We consider a random knockout tournament among players $1, \ldots, n$, in which each match involves two players. The match format is specified by the number of matches played in each round, where the constitution of the matches in a round…
We consider the manipulability of tournament rules, in which $n$ teams play a round robin tournament and a winner is (possibly randomly) selected based on the outcome of all $\binom{n}{2}$ matches. Prior work defines a tournament rule to be…
We think of a tournament $T=([n], E)$ as a communication network where in each round of communication processor $P_i$ sends its information to $P_j$, for every directed edge $ij \in E(T)$. By Landau's theorem (1953) there is a King in $T$,…
We construct a new quantum algorithm for the graph collision problem; that is, the problem of deciding whether the set of marked vertices contains a pair of adjacent vertices in a known graph G. The query complexity of our algorithm is…
We study the communication complexity of $(\Delta + 1)$ vertex coloring, where the edges of an $n$-vertex graph of maximum degree $\Delta$ are partitioned between two players. We provide a randomized protocol which uses $O(n)$ bits of…
We study the $b$-matching problem in bipartite graphs $G=(S,R,E)$. Each vertex $s\in S$ is a server with individual capacity $b_s$. The vertices $r\in R$ are requests that arrive online and must be assigned instantly to an eligible server.…
In this thesis we prove a variety of theorems on tournaments. A \emph{prime} tournament is a tournament $G$ such that there is no $X \subseteq V(G)$, $1 < |X| < |V(G)|$, such that for every vertex $v \in V(G) \minus X$, either $v \ra x$ for…
We study the query complexity of determining if a graph is connected with global queries. The first model we look at is matrix-vector multiplication queries to the adjacency matrix. Here, for an $n$-vertex graph with adjacency matrix $A$,…
Challenge the Champ is a simple tournament format, where an ordering of the players -- called a seeding -- is decided. The first player in this order is the initial champ, and faces the next player. The outcome of each match decides the…
An {\it inversion} of a tournament $T$ is obtained by reversing the direction of all edges with both endpoints in some set of vertices. Let ${\rm inv}_k(T)$ be the minimum length of a sequence of inversions using sets of size at most $k$…
A tournament is a method to decide the winner in a competition, and describes the overall sequence in which matches between the players are held. While deciding a worthy winner is the primary goal of a tournament, a close second is to…
League competition is investigated using random processes and scaling techniques. In our model, a weak team can upset a strong team with a fixed probability. Teams play an equal number of head-to-head matches and the team with the largest…
In this paper, we study the distributed sketching complexity of connectivity. In distributed graph sketching, an $n$-node graph $G$ is distributed to $n$ players such that each player sees the neighborhood of one vertex. The players then…
Tournaments are orientations of the complete graph, and the directed Ramsey number $R(k)$ is the minimum number of vertices a tournament must have to be guaranteed to contain a transitive subtournament of size $k$, which we denote by…
A digraph $D$ is $k$-linked if for any pair of two disjoint sets $\{x_{1},x_{2},\ldots,x_{k}\}$ and $\{y_{1},y_{2},\ldots,y_{k}\}$ of vertices in $D$, there exist vertex disjoint dipaths $P_{1},P_{2},\ldots,P_{k}$ such that $P_{i}$ is a…
In the classical online model, the maximum independent set problem admits an $\Omega(n)$ lower bound on the competitive ratio even for interval graphs, motivating the study of the problem under additional assumptions. We first study the…
Let $H$ be a fixed graph on $n$ vertices. Let $f_H(G) = 1$ iff the input graph $G$ on $n$ vertices contains $H$ as a (not necessarily induced) subgraph. Let $\alpha_H$ denote the cardinality of a maximum independent set of $H$. In this…
The Maximum Matching problem has a quantum query complexity lower bound of $\Omega(n^{3/2})$ for graphs on $n$ vertices represented by an adjacency matrix. The current best quantum algorithm has the query complexity $O(n^{7/4})$, which is…