Related papers: Spectral Lower Bounds for Local Search
Local search is a powerful heuristic in optimization and computer science, the complexity of which was studied in the white box and black box models. In the black box model, we are given a graph $G = (V,E)$ and oracle access to a function…
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 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 analyze the query complexity of finding a local minimum in $t$ rounds on general graphs. More precisely, given a graph $G = (V,E)$ and oracle access to an unknown function $f : V \to \mathbb{R}$, the goal is to find a local minimum--a…
Local Search problem, which finds a local minimum of a black-box function on a given graph, is of both practical and theoretical importance to combinatorial optimization, complexity theory and many other areas in theoretical computer…
Let G=(V,E) be a finite graph, and f:V->N be any function. The Local Search problem consists in finding a local minimum of the function f on G, that is a vertex v such that f(v) is not larger than the value of f on the neighbors of v in G.…
We consider the query complexity of finding a local minimum of a function defined on a graph. This abstract problem is fundamental to many optimization tasks, such as finding a local minimum of the loss function when training deep neural…
The Local Search problem, which finds a local minimum of a black-box function on a given graph, is of both practical and theoretical importance to many areas in computer science and natural sciences. In this paper, we show that for the…
The Minimum Vertex Cover (MinVC) problem is a well-known NP-hard problem. Recently there has been great interest in solving this problem on real-world massive graphs. For such graphs, local search is a promising approach to finding optimal…
Graph Balancing is the problem of orienting the edges of a weighted multigraph so as to minimize the maximum weighted in-degree. Since the introduction of the problem the best algorithm known achieves an approximation ratio of $1.75$ and it…
Local Search is one of the fundamental approaches to combinatorial optimization and it is used throughout AI. Several local search algorithms are based on searching the k-exchange neighborhood. This is the set of solutions that can be…
Dominating Set is a well-known combinatorial optimization problem which finds application in computational biology or mobile communication. Because of its $\mathrm{NP}$-hardness, one often turns to heuristics for good solutions. Many such…
Very recently, Khoury and Schild [FOCS 2025] showed that any randomized LOCAL algorithm that solves maximal matching requires $\Omega(\min\{\log \Delta, \log_\Delta n\})$ rounds, where $n$ is the number of nodes in the graph and $\Delta$ is…
For $0\leq \rho\leq 1$ and a coloured graph $G$, a vertex $v$ is $\rho$-happy if at least $\rho \mathrm{deg}(v)$ of its neighbours have the same colour as $v$. Soft happy colouring of a partially coloured graph $G$ is the problem of finding…
Consider the following generalization of the classic binary search problem: A searcher is required to find a hidden target vertex $x$ in a graph $G$. To do so, they iteratively perform queries to an oracle, each about a chosen vertex $v$.…
We study the complexity of fundamental distributed graph problems in the recently popular setting where information about the input graph is available to the nodes before the start of the computation. We focus on the most common such…
We propose a unifying framework for smoothed analysis of combinatorial local optimization problems, and show how a diverse selection of problems within the complexity class PLS can be cast within this model. This abstraction allows us to…
We consider a family of local search algorithms for the minimum-weight spanning tree, indexed by a parameter $\rho$. One step of the local search corresponds to replacing a connected induced subgraph of the current candidate graph whose…
The problem of finding a local minimum of a black-box function is central for understanding local search as well as quantum adiabatic algorithms. For functions on the Boolean hypercube {0,1}^n, we show a lower bound of Omega(2^{n/4}/n) on…
In network analysis and graph mining, closeness centrality is a popular measure to infer the importance of a vertex. Computing closeness efficiently for individual vertices received considerable attention. The NP-hard problem of group…