Routing Symmetric Demands in Directed Minor-Free Graphs with Constant Congestion

The problem of routing in graphs using node-disjoint paths has received a lot of attention and a polylogarithmic approximation algorithm with constant congestion is known for undirected graphs [Chuzhoy and Li 2016] and [Chekuri and Ene 2013]. However, the problem is hard to approximate within polynomial factors on directed graphs, for any constant congestion [Chuzhoy, Kim and Li 2016]. Recently, [Chekuri, Ene and Pilipczuk 2016] have obtained a polylogarithmic approximation with constant congestion on directed planar graphs, for the special case of symmetric demands. We extend their result by obtaining a polylogarithmic approximation with constant congestion on arbitrary directed minor-free graphs, for the case of symmetric demands

Improved approximation for 3-dimensional matching via bounded pathwidth local search

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 known 3-Dimensional Matching problem. Both problems belong to the Karp`s list of 21 NP-complete problems. The best known polynomial time approximation ratio for k-Set Packing is (k + eps)/2 and goes back to the work of Hurkens and Schrijver [SIDMA`89], which gives (1.5 + eps)-approximation for 3-Dimensional Matching. Those results are obtained by a simple local search algorithm, that uses constant size swaps. The main result of the paper is a new approach to local search for k-Set Packing where only a special type of swaps is considered, which we call swaps of bounded pathwidth. We show that for a fixed value of k one can search the space of r-size swaps of constant pathwidth in c^r poly(|F|) time. Moreover we present an analysis proving that a local search maximum with respect to O(log |F|)-size swaps of constant pathwidth yields a polynomial time (k + 1 + eps)/3-approximation algorithm, improving the best known approximation ratio for k-Set Packing. In particular we improve the approximation ratio for 3-Dimensional Matching from 3/2 + eps to 4/3 + eps.Comment: To appear in proceedings of FOCS 201

Pre-Reduction Graph Products: Hardnesses of Properly Learning DFAs and Approximating EDP on DAGs

The study of graph products is a major research topic and typically concerns the term $f(G*H)$, e.g., to show that $f(G*H)=f(G)f(H)$. In this paper, we study graph products in a non-standard form $f(R[G*H]$ where $R$ is a "reduction", a transformation of any graph into an instance of an intended optimization problem. We resolve some open problems as applications. (1) A tight $n^{1-\epsilon}$-approximation hardness for the minimum consistent deterministic finite automaton (DFA) problem, where $n$ is the sample size. Due to Board and Pitt [Theoretical Computer Science 1992], this implies the hardness of properly learning DFAs assuming $NP\neq RP$ (the weakest possible assumption). (2) A tight $n^{1/2-\epsilon}$ hardness for the edge-disjoint paths (EDP) problem on directed acyclic graphs (DAGs), where $n$ denotes the number of vertices. (3) A tight hardness of packing vertex-disjoint $k$-cycles for large $k$. (4) An alternative (and perhaps simpler) proof for the hardness of properly learning DNF, CNF and intersection of halfspaces [Alekhnovich et al., FOCS 2004 and J. Comput.Syst.Sci. 2008]