Related papers: Gap Amplification for Reconfiguration Problems
The subspace approximation problem Subspace($k$,$p$) asks for a $k$-dimensional linear subspace that fits a given set of points optimally, where the error for fitting is a generalization of the least squares fit and uses the $\ell_{p}$ norm…
In this paper, we prove a general hardness amplification scheme for optimization problems based on the technique of direct products. We say that an optimization problem $\Pi$ is direct product feasible if it is possible to efficiently…
Asadpour, Feige, and Saberi proved that the integrality gap of the configuration LP for the restricted max-min allocation problem is at most $4$. However, their proof does not give a polynomial-time approximation algorithm. A lot of efforts…
In the Tree Augmentation Problem (TAP) the goal is to augment a tree $T$ by a minimum size edge set $F$ from a given edge set $E$ such that $T \cup F$ is $2$-edge-connected. The best approximation ratio known for TAP is $1.5$. In the more…
In Part I, we study a special case of the unweighted Tree Augmentation Problem (TAP) via the Lasserre (Sum of Squares) system. In the special case, we forbid so-called stems; these are a particular type of subtree configuration. For…
We prove new results for approximating the graphic TSP and some related problems. We obtain polynomial-time algorithms with improved approximation guarantees. For the graphic TSP itself, we improve the approximation ratio to 7/5. For a…
We consider the question of approximating Max 2-CSP where each variable appears in at most $d$ constraints (but with possibly arbitrarily large alphabet). There is a simple $(\frac{d+1}{2})$-approximation algorithm for the problem. We prove…
The Small Set Expansion Hypothesis (SSEH) is a conjecture which roughly states that it is NP-hard to distinguish between a graph with a small subset of vertices whose edge expansion is almost zero and one in which all small subsets of…
This work is concerned with approximating constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs) with an additional global cardinality constraints. For example, \maxcut is a boolean CSP where the input is a graph $G = (V,E)$ and the goal is to find a cut…
The robust adaptive beamforming (RAB) problem for general-rank signal model with an uncertainty set defined through a matrix induced norm is considered. The worst-case signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) maximization RAB problem…
We introduce a 2-round stochastic constraint-satisfaction problem, and show that its approximation version is complete for (the promise version of) the complexity class AM. This gives a `PCP characterization' of AM analogous to the PCP…
We initiate the study of approximating the largest induced expander in a given graph $G$. Given a $\Delta$-regular graph $G$ with $n$ vertices, the goal is to find the set with the largest induced expansion of size at least $\delta \cdot…
Strip packing is a classical packing problem, where the goal is to pack a set of rectangular objects into a strip of a given width, while minimizing the total height of the packing. The problem has multiple applications, e.g. in scheduling…
We study various SDP formulations for {\sc Vertex Cover} by adding different constraints to the standard formulation. We show that {\sc Vertex Cover} cannot be approximated better than $2-o(1)$ even when we add the so called pentagonal…
We continue the study of the covering complexity of constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs) initiated by Guruswami, H{\aa}stad and Sudan [SIAM J. Comp. 2002] and Dinur and Kol [CCC'13]. The covering number of a CSP instance $\Phi$ is the…
Recoverable robust optimization is a popular multi-stage approach, in which it is possible to adjust a first-stage solution after the uncertain cost scenario is revealed. We consider recoverable robust optimization in combination with…
Random instances of Constraint Satisfaction Problems (CSP's) appear to be hard for all known algorithms, when the number of constraints per variable lies in a certain interval. Contributing to the general understanding of the structure of…
We study the reconfiguration of odd matchings of combinatorial graphs. Odd matchings are matchings that cover all but one vertex of a graph. A reconfiguration step, or flip, is an operation that matches the isolated vertex and,…
Can AI based methods help us make advances in complexity theory? We provide evidence towards answering this in the affirmative, using AlphaEvolve (an LLM code mutation agent) to obtain new results in three settings: a) We improve a recent…
We study random constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs) in the unsatisfiable regime. We relate the structure of near-optimal solutions for any Max-CSP to that for an associated spin glass on the hypercube, using the Guerra-Toninelli…