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Let $G$ be a complete edge-weighted graph on $n$ vertices. To each subset of vertices of $G$ assign the cost of the minimum spanning tree of the subset as its weight. Suppose that $n$ is a multiple of some fixed positive integer $k$. The…
The problem of (approximately) counting the independent sets of a bipartite graph (#BIS) is the canonical approximate counting problem that is complete in the intermediate complexity class #RH\Pi_1. It is believed that #BIS does not have an…
This paper studies a single-machine scheduling problem with a non-renewable resource (NR-SSP) and total weighted completion time criterion. The non-renewable resource is consumed when the machine starts processing a job. We consider the…
We are given n base elements and a finite collection of subsets of them. The size of any subset varies between p to k (p < k). In addition, we assume that the input contains all possible subsets of size p. Our objective is to find a…
In recent work of Hazan and Krauthgamer (SICOMP 2011), it was shown that finding an $\eps$-approximate Nash equilibrium with near-optimal value in a two-player game is as hard as finding a hidden clique of size $O(\log n)$ in the random…
One of the most natural optimization problems is the k-Set Packing problem, where given a family of sets of size at most k one should select a maximum size subfamily of pairwise disjoint sets. A special case of 3-Set Packing is the well…
We present the first formal verification of approximation algorithms for NP-complete optimization problems: vertex cover, independent set, set cover, center selection, load balancing, and bin packing. We uncover incompletenesses in existing…
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…
We develop fast approximation algorithms for the minimum-cost version of the Bounded-Degree MST problem (BD-MST) and its generalization the Crossing Spanning Tree problem (Crossing-ST). We solve the underlying LP to within a $(1+\epsilon)$…
Consider a vertex-weighted graph $G$ with a source $s$ and a target $t$. Tracking Paths requires finding a minimum weight set of vertices (trackers) such that the sequence of trackers in each path from $s$ to $t$ is unique. In this work, we…
We unconditionally prove that it is NP-hard to compute a constant multiplicative approximation to the QUANTUM MAX-CUT problem on an unweighted graph of constant bounded degree. The proof works in two stages: first we demonstrate a generic…
This paper introduces the \emph{$d$-distance matching problem}, in which we are given a bipartite graph $G=(S,T;E)$ with $S=\{s_1,\dots,s_n\}$, a weight function on the edges and an integer $d\in\mathbb Z_+$. The goal is to find a maximum…
The 1-median problem (1MP) on undirected weighted graphs seeks to find a facility location minimizing the total weighted distance to all customer nodes. Although the 1MP can be solved exactly by computing the single-source shortest paths…
A matching in a graph is induced if no two of its edges are joined by an edge, and finding a large induced matching is a very hard problem. Lin et al. (Approximating weighted induced matchings, Discrete Applied Mathematics 243 (2018)…
Connectivity augmentation problems are among the most elementary questions in Network Design. Many of these problems admit natural $2$-approximation algorithms, often through various classic techniques, whereas it remains open whether…
In this paper we consider the classic scheduling problem of minimizing total weighted completion time on unrelated machines when jobs have release times, i.e, $R | r_{ij} | \sum_j w_j C_j$ using the three-field notation. For this problem, a…
This paper considers a generalized version of the coin weighing problem with a spring scale that lies at the intersection of group testing and compressed sensing problems. Given a collection of $n\geq 2$ coins of total weight $d$ (for a…
The NP-hard Metric Dimension problem is to decide for a given graph G and a positive integer k whether there is a vertex subset of size at most k that separates all vertex pairs in G. Herein, a vertex v separates a pair {u,w} if the…
This paper presents a fast and simple new 2-approximation algorithm for minimum weighted vertex cover. The unweighted version of this algorithm is equivalent to a well-known greedy maximal independent set algorithm. We prove that this…
We study the max-min fair allocation problem in which a set of $m$ indivisible items are to be distributed among $n$ agents such that the minimum utility among all agents is maximized. In the restricted setting, the utility of each item $j$…