Related papers: Gap Amplification for Reconfiguration Problems

The survey propagation (SP) algorithm has been shown to work well on large instances of the random 3-SAT problem near its phase transition. It was shown that SP estimates marginals over covers that represent clusters of solutions. The SP-y…

The classical NP-hard feedback arc set problem (FASP) and feedback vertex set problem (FVSP) ask for a minimum set of arcs $\varepsilon \subseteq E$ or vertices $\nu \subseteq V$ whose removal $G\setminus \varepsilon$, $G\setminus \nu$…

In this paper, we investigate the weighted tree augmentation problem (TAP), where the goal is to augment a tree with a minimum cost set of edges such that the graph becomes two edge connected. First we show that in weighted TAP, we can…

This paper considers stochastic convex optimization problems with smooth functional constraints arising in constrained estimation and robust signal recovery. We operate in the high-dimensional and highly-constrained setting, where oracle…

For a digraph $D$ and some $X \subseteq V(D)$, the inversion of $X$ is the operation of flipping all arcs both of whose endvertices are in $X$. We initiate the study of establishing arc-connectivity properties by applying inversions of…

Constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs) are ubiquitous in theoretical computer science. We study the problem of StrongCSPs, i.e. instances where a large induced sub-instance has a satisfying assignment. More formally, given a CSP instance…

Let $\mathcal{Q}$ be a vertex subset problem on graphs. In a reconfiguration variant of $\mathcal{Q}$ we are given a graph $G$ and two feasible solutions $S_s, S_t\subseteq V(G)$ of $\mathcal{Q}$ with $|S_s|=|S_t|=k$. The problem is to…

We study a combinatorial problem called Minimum Maximal Matching, where we are asked to find in a general graph the smallest that can not be extended. We show that this problem is hard to approximate with a constant smaller than 2, assuming…

We present the first results on the parameterized complexity of reconfiguration problems, where a reconfiguration version of an optimization problem $Q$ takes as input two feasible solutions $S$ and $T$ and determines if there is a sequence…

Bl\"omer and Seifert showed that $\mathsf{SIVP}_2$ is NP-hard to approximate by giving a reduction from $\mathsf{CVP}_2$ to $\mathsf{SIVP}_2$ for constant approximation factors as long as the $\mathsf{CVP}$ instance has a certain property.…

In the well-known complexity class NP are combinatorial problems, whose optimization counterparts are important for many practical settings. These problems typically consider full knowledge about the input. In practical settings, however,…

Proving the NP-completeness of pencil-and-paper puzzles typically relies on reductions from combinatorial problems such as the satisfiability problem (SAT). Although the properties of these problems are well studied, their purely…

In the Demand Strip Packing problem (DSP), we are given a time interval and a collection of tasks, each characterized by a processing time and a demand for a given resource (such as electricity, computational power, etc.). A feasible…

We consider two classic problems: maximum coverage and monotone submodular maximization subject to a cardinality constraint. [Nemhauser--Wolsey--Fisher '78] proved that the greedy algorithm provides an approximation of $1-1/e$ for both…

This paper addresses the Graph Matching problem, which consists of finding the best possible alignment between two input graphs, and has many applications in computer vision, network deanonymization and protein alignment. A common approach…

The Constraint Satisfaction Problem (CSP) is a problem of computing a homomorphism $\mathbf{R}\to \mathbf{\Gamma}$ between two relational structures, where $\mathbf{R}$ is defined over a domain $V$ and $\mathbf{\Gamma}$ is defined over a…

The densest k-subgraph (DkS) problem (i.e. find a size k subgraph with maximum number of edges), is one of the notorious problems in approximation algorithms. There is a significant gap between known upper and lower bounds for DkS: the…

The quantum PCP conjecture asks whether it is QMA-hard to distinguish between high- and low-energy Hamiltonians even when the gap between "high" and "low" energy is large (constant). A natural proof strategy is gap amplification: start from…

We study the role of perfect completeness in probabilistically checkable proof systems (PCPs) and give a new way to transform a PCP with imperfect completeness to a PCP with perfect completeness when the initial gap is a constant. In…

For any $\varepsilon > 0$, we prove that $k$-Dimensional Matching is hard to approximate within a factor of $k/(12 + \varepsilon)$ for large $k$ unless $\textsf{NP} \subseteq \textsf{BPP}$. Listed in Karp's 21 $\textsf{NP}$-complete…