7 research outputs found
The Densest k-Subhypergraph Problem
The Densest -Subgraph (DS) problem, and its corresponding minimization
problem Smallest -Edge Subgraph (SES), have come to play a central role
in approximation algorithms. This is due both to their practical importance,
and their usefulness as a tool for solving and establishing approximation
bounds for other problems. These two problems are not well understood, and it
is widely believed that they do not an admit a subpolynomial approximation
ratio (although the best known hardness results do not rule this out).
In this paper we generalize both DS and SES from graphs to hypergraphs.
We consider the Densest -Subhypergraph problem (given a hypergraph ,
find a subset of vertices so as to maximize the number of
hyperedges contained in ) and define the Minimum -Union problem (given a
hypergraph, choose of the hyperedges so as to minimize the number of
vertices in their union). We focus in particular on the case where all
hyperedges have size 3, as this is the simplest non-graph setting. For this
case we provide an -approximation (for arbitrary constant )
for Densest -Subhypergraph and an -approximation for
Minimum -Union. We also give an -approximation for Minimum
-Union in general hypergraphs. Finally, we examine the interesting special
case of interval hypergraphs (instances where the vertices are a subset of the
natural numbers and the hyperedges are intervals of the line) and prove that
both problems admit an exact polynomial time solution on these instances.Comment: 21 page
Vertex Sparsifiers: New Results from Old Techniques
Given a capacitated graph and a set of terminals ,
how should we produce a graph only on the terminals so that every
(multicommodity) flow between the terminals in could be supported in
with low congestion, and vice versa? (Such a graph is called a
flow-sparsifier for .) What if we want to be a "simple" graph? What if
we allow to be a convex combination of simple graphs?
Improving on results of Moitra [FOCS 2009] and Leighton and Moitra [STOC
2010], we give efficient algorithms for constructing: (a) a flow-sparsifier
that maintains congestion up to a factor of , where , (b) a convex combination of trees over the terminals that maintains
congestion up to a factor of , and (c) for a planar graph , a
convex combination of planar graphs that maintains congestion up to a constant
factor. This requires us to give a new algorithm for the 0-extension problem,
the first one in which the preimages of each terminal are connected in .
Moreover, this result extends to minor-closed families of graphs.
Our improved bounds immediately imply improved approximation guarantees for
several terminal-based cut and ordering problems.Comment: An extended abstract appears in the 13th International Workshop on
Approximation Algorithms for Combinatorial Optimization Problems (APPROX),
2010. Final version to appear in SIAM J. Computin
A Birthday Repetition Theorem and Complexity of Approximating Dense CSPs
A -birthday repetition of a
two-prover game is a game in which the two provers are sent
random sets of questions from of sizes and respectively.
These two sets are sampled independently uniformly among all sets of questions
of those particular sizes. We prove the following birthday repetition theorem:
when satisfies some mild conditions, decreases exponentially in where is the total number of
questions. Our result positively resolves an open question posted by Aaronson,
Impagliazzo and Moshkovitz (CCC 2014).
As an application of our birthday repetition theorem, we obtain new
fine-grained hardness of approximation results for dense CSPs. Specifically, we
establish a tight trade-off between running time and approximation ratio for
dense CSPs by showing conditional lower bounds, integrality gaps and
approximation algorithms. In particular, for any sufficiently large and for
every , we show the following results:
- We exhibit an -approximation algorithm for dense Max -CSPs
with alphabet size via -level of Sherali-Adams relaxation.
- Through our birthday repetition theorem, we obtain an integrality gap of
for -level Lasserre relaxation for fully-dense Max
-CSP.
- Assuming that there is a constant such that Max 3SAT cannot
be approximated to within of the optimal in sub-exponential
time, our birthday repetition theorem implies that any algorithm that
approximates fully-dense Max -CSP to within a factor takes
time, almost tightly matching the algorithmic
result based on Sherali-Adams relaxation.Comment: 45 page