86 research outputs found
Directed Steiner Tree and the Lasserre Hierarchy
The goal for the Directed Steiner Tree problem is to find a minimum cost tree
in a directed graph G=(V,E) that connects all terminals X to a given root r. It
is well known that modulo a logarithmic factor it suffices to consider acyclic
graphs where the nodes are arranged in L <= log |X| levels. Unfortunately the
natural LP formulation has a |X|^(1/2) integrality gap already for 5 levels. We
show that for every L, the O(L)-round Lasserre Strengthening of this LP has
integrality gap O(L log |X|). This provides a polynomial time
|X|^{epsilon}-approximation and a O(log^3 |X|) approximation in O(n^{log |X|)
time, matching the best known approximation guarantee obtained by a greedy
algorithm of Charikar et al.Comment: 23 pages, 1 figur
Lift & Project Systems Performing on the Partial-Vertex-Cover Polytope
We study integrality gap (IG) lower bounds on strong LP and SDP relaxations
derived by the Sherali-Adams (SA), Lovasz-Schrijver-SDP (LS+), and
Sherali-Adams-SDP (SA+) lift-and-project (L&P) systems for the
t-Partial-Vertex-Cover (t-PVC) problem, a variation of the classic Vertex-Cover
problem in which only t edges need to be covered. t-PVC admits a
2-approximation using various algorithmic techniques, all relying on a natural
LP relaxation. Starting from this LP relaxation, our main results assert that
for every epsilon > 0, level-Theta(n) LPs or SDPs derived by all known L&P
systems that have been used for positive algorithmic results (but the Lasserre
hierarchy) have IGs at least (1-epsilon)n/t, where n is the number of vertices
of the input graph. Our lower bounds are nearly tight.
Our results show that restricted yet powerful models of computation derived
by many L&P systems fail to witness c-approximate solutions to t-PVC for any
constant c, and for t = O(n). This is one of the very few known examples of an
intractable combinatorial optimization problem for which LP-based algorithms
induce a constant approximation ratio, still lift-and-project LP and SDP
tightenings of the same LP have unbounded IGs.
We also show that the SDP that has given the best algorithm known for t-PVC
has integrality gap n/t on instances that can be solved by the level-1 LP
relaxation derived by the LS system. This constitutes another rare phenomenon
where (even in specific instances) a static LP outperforms an SDP that has been
used for the best approximation guarantee for the problem at hand. Finally, one
of our main contributions is that we make explicit of a new and simple
methodology of constructing solutions to LP relaxations that almost trivially
satisfy constraints derived by all SDP L&P systems known to be useful for
algorithmic positive results (except the La system).Comment: 26 page
Exponential Lower Bounds for Polytopes in Combinatorial Optimization
We solve a 20-year old problem posed by Yannakakis and prove that there
exists no polynomial-size linear program (LP) whose associated polytope
projects to the traveling salesman polytope, even if the LP is not required to
be symmetric. Moreover, we prove that this holds also for the cut polytope and
the stable set polytope. These results were discovered through a new connection
that we make between one-way quantum communication protocols and semidefinite
programming reformulations of LPs.Comment: 19 pages, 4 figures. This version of the paper will appear in the
Journal of the ACM. The earlier conference version in STOC'12 had the title
"Linear vs. Semidefinite Extended Formulations: Exponential Separation and
Strong Lower Bounds
Uncapacitated Flow-based Extended Formulations
An extended formulation of a polytope is a linear description of this
polytope using extra variables besides the variables in which the polytope is
defined. The interest of extended formulations is due to the fact that many
interesting polytopes have extended formulations with a lot fewer inequalities
than any linear description in the original space. This motivates the
development of methods for, on the one hand, constructing extended formulations
and, on the other hand, proving lower bounds on the sizes of extended
formulations.
Network flows are a central paradigm in discrete optimization, and are widely
used to design extended formulations. We prove exponential lower bounds on the
sizes of uncapacitated flow-based extended formulations of several polytopes,
such as the (bipartite and non-bipartite) perfect matching polytope and TSP
polytope. We also give new examples of flow-based extended formulations, e.g.,
for 0/1-polytopes defined from regular languages. Finally, we state a few open
problems
Graph Isomorphism and the Lasserre Hierarchy
In this paper we show lower bounds for a certain large class of algorithms
solving the Graph Isomorphism problem, even on expander graph instances.
Spielman [25] shows an algorithm for isomorphism of strongly regular expander
graphs that runs in time exp(O(n^(1/3)) (this bound was recently improved to
expf O(n^(1/5) [5]). It has since been an open question to remove the
requirement that the graph be strongly regular. Recent algorithmic results show
that for many problems the Lasserre hierarchy works surprisingly well when the
underlying graph has expansion properties. Moreover, recent work of Atserias
and Maneva [3] shows that k rounds of the Lasserre hierarchy is a
generalization of the k-dimensional Weisfeiler-Lehman algorithm for Graph
Isomorphism. These two facts combined make the Lasserre hierarchy a good
candidate for solving graph isomorphism on expander graphs. Our main result
rules out this promising direction by showing that even Omega(n) rounds of the
Lasserre semidefinite program hierarchy fail to solve the Graph Isomorphism
problem even on expander graphs.Comment: 22 pages, 3 figures, submitted to CC
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