Robust Exponential Worst Cases for Divide-et-Impera Algorithms for Parity Games

The McNaughton-Zielonka divide et impera algorithm is the simplest and most flexible approach available in the literature for determining the winner in a parity game. Despite its theoretical worst-case complexity and the negative reputation as a poorly effective algorithm in practice, it has been shown to rank among the best techniques for the solution of such games. Also, it proved to be resistant to a lower bound attack, even more than the strategy improvements approaches, and only recently a family of games on which the algorithm requires exponential time has been provided by Friedmann. An easy analysis of this family shows that a simple memoization technique can help the algorithm solve the family in polynomial time. The same result can also be achieved by exploiting an approach based on the dominion-decomposition techniques proposed in the literature. These observations raise the question whether a suitable combination of dynamic programming and game-decomposition techniques can improve on the exponential worst case of the original algorithm. In this paper we answer this question negatively, by providing a robustly exponential worst case, showing that no intertwining of the above mentioned techniques can help mitigating the exponential nature of the divide et impera approaches.Comment: In Proceedings GandALF 2017, arXiv:1709.0176

Geometric Property (T)

This paper discusses `geometric property (T)'. This is a property of metric spaces introduced in earlier work of the authors for its applications to K-theory. Geometric property (T) is a strong form of `expansion property': in particular for a sequence of finite graphs $(X_n)$, it is strictly stronger than $(X_n)$ being an expander in the sense that the Cheeger constants $h(X_n)$ are bounded below. We show here that geometric property (T) is a coarse invariant, i.e. depends only on the large-scale geometry of a metric space $X$. We also discuss the relationships between geometric property (T) and amenability, property (T), and various coarse geometric notions of a-T-menability. In particular, we show that property (T) for a residually finite group is characterised by geometric property (T) for its finite quotients.Comment: Version two corrects some typos and a mistake in the proof of Lemma 8.