Related papers: The complexity of approximating PSPACE-Complete pr…
We study the computational complexity of approximating general constrained Markov decision processes. Our primary contribution is the design of a polynomial time $(0,\epsilon)$-additive bicriteria approximation algorithm for finding optimal…
We present an $(1+\varepsilon)$-approximation algorithm with quasi-polynomial running time for computing the maximum weight independent set of polygons out of a given set of polygons in the plane (specifically, the running time is $n^{O(…
We design new algorithms for approximating 2CSPs on graphs with bounded threshold rank, that is, whose normalized adjacency matrix has few eigenvalues larger than $\varepsilon$, smaller than $-\varepsilon$, or both. Unlike on worst-case…
Let $H$ be a $k$-graph on $n$ vertices, with minimum codegree at least $n/k + cn$ for some fixed $c > 0$. In this paper we construct a polynomial-time algorithm which finds either a perfect matching in $H$ or a certificate that none exists.…
$ \newcommand{\eps}{\epsilon} \newcommand{\NP}{\mathsf{NP}} \newcommand{\YES}{\mathsf{YES}} \newcommand{\NO}{\mathsf{NO}} \newcommand{\myminus}{\text{-}}\newcommand{\Bsat}{{\mathsf{B}}} \newcommand{\threesat}{\rm{3}\myminus\mathsf{SAT}}…
The (non-uniform) sparsest cut problem is the following graph-partitioning problem: given a "supply" graph, and demands on pairs of vertices, delete some subset of supply edges to minimize the ratio of the supply edges cut to the total…
We provide a new approach for establishing hardness of approximation results, based on the theory recently introduced by the author. It allows one to directly show that approximating a problem beyond a certain threshold requires…
An NP-hard combinatorial optimization problem $\Pi$ is said to have an {\em approximation threshold} if there is some $t$ such that the optimal value of $\Pi$ can be approximated in polynomial time within a ratio of $t$, and it is NP-hard…
The maximum common subtree isomorphism problem asks for the largest possible isomorphism between subtrees of two given input trees. This problem is a natural restriction of the maximum common subgraph problem, which is ${\sf NP}$-hard in…
In the unsplittable flow problem on a path, we are given a capacitated path $P$ and $n$ tasks, each task having a demand, a profit, and start and end vertices. The goal is to compute a maximum profit set of tasks, such that for each edge…
We study optimization problems that are neither approximable in polynomial time (at least with a constant factor) nor fixed parameter tractable, under widely believed complexity assumptions. Specifically, we focus on Maximum Independent…
The problem of minimizing a polynomial over a set of polynomial inequalities is an NP-hard non-convex problem. Thanks to powerful results from real algebraic geometry, one can convert this problem into a nested sequence of…
The (Non-Preemptive) Throughput Maximization problem is a natural and fundamental scheduling problem. We are given $n$ jobs, where each job $j$ is characterized by a processing time and a time window, contained in a global interval $[0,T)$,…
The max-cut problem is a classical graph theory problem which is NP-complete. The best polynomial time approximation scheme relies on \emph{semidefinite programming} (SDP). We study the conditions under which graphs of certain classes have…
In the classic Maximum Weight Independent Set problem we are given a graph $G$ with a nonnegative weight function on vertices, and the goal is to find an independent set in $G$ of maximum possible weight. While the problem is NP-hard in…
We study approximation algorithms for several variants of the MaxCover problem, with the focus on algorithms that run in FPT time. In the MaxCover problem we are given a set N of elements, a family S of subsets of N, and an integer K. The…
We study a class of combinatorial scheduling problems characterized by a particular type of constraint often associated with electrical power or gas energy. This constraint appears in several practical applications and is expressed as a sum…
We examine the possibility of approximating Maximum Vertex-Disjoint Shortest Paths. In this problem, the input is an edge-weighted (directed or undirected) $n$-vertex graph $G$ along with $k$ terminal pairs…
Packing problems are an important class of optimization problems. The probably most well-known problem if this type is knapsack and many generalizations of it have been studied in the literature like Two-dimensional Geometric Knapsack…
Under a standard assumption in complexity theory (NP not in P/poly), we demonstrate a gap between the minimax prediction risk for sparse linear regression that can be achieved by polynomial-time algorithms, and that achieved by optimal…