27,950 research outputs found
On the Hardness of the Strongly Dependent Decision Problem
We present necessary and sufficient conditions for solving the strongly
dependent decision (SDD) problem in various distributed systems. Our main
contribution is a novel characterization of the SDD problem based on point-set
topology. For partially synchronous systems, we show that any algorithm that
solves the SDD problem induces a set of executions that is closed with respect
to the point-set topology. We also show that the SDD problem is not solvable in
the asynchronous system augmented with any arbitrarily strong failure
detectors.Comment: Appeared in ICDCN 201
The Computational Complexity of the Restricted Isometry Property, the Nullspace Property, and Related Concepts in Compressed Sensing
This paper deals with the computational complexity of conditions which
guarantee that the NP-hard problem of finding the sparsest solution to an
underdetermined linear system can be solved by efficient algorithms. In the
literature, several such conditions have been introduced. The most well-known
ones are the mutual coherence, the restricted isometry property (RIP), and the
nullspace property (NSP). While evaluating the mutual coherence of a given
matrix is easy, it has been suspected for some time that evaluating RIP and NSP
is computationally intractable in general. We confirm these conjectures by
showing that for a given matrix A and positive integer k, computing the best
constants for which the RIP or NSP hold is, in general, NP-hard. These results
are based on the fact that determining the spark of a matrix is NP-hard, which
is also established in this paper. Furthermore, we also give several complexity
statements about problems related to the above concepts.Comment: 13 pages; accepted for publication in IEEE Trans. Inf. Theor
Syntactic Separation of Subset Satisfiability Problems
Variants of the Exponential Time Hypothesis (ETH) have been used to derive lower bounds on the time complexity for certain problems, so that the hardness results match long-standing algorithmic results. In this paper, we consider a syntactically defined class of problems, and give conditions for when problems in this class require strongly exponential time to approximate to within a factor of (1-epsilon) for some constant epsilon > 0, assuming the Gap Exponential Time Hypothesis (Gap-ETH), versus when they admit a PTAS. Our class includes a rich set of problems from additive combinatorics, computational geometry, and graph theory. Our hardness results also match the best known algorithmic results for these problems
What makes a phase transition? Analysis of the random satisfiability problem
In the last 30 years it was found that many combinatorial systems undergo
phase transitions. One of the most important examples of these can be found
among the random k-satisfiability problems (often referred to as k-SAT), asking
whether there exists an assignment of Boolean values satisfying a Boolean
formula composed of clauses with k random variables each. The random 3-SAT
problem is reported to show various phase transitions at different critical
values of the ratio of the number of clauses to the number of variables. The
most famous of these occurs when the probability of finding a satisfiable
instance suddenly drops from 1 to 0. This transition is associated with a rise
in the hardness of the problem, but until now the correlation between any of
the proposed phase transitions and the hardness is not totally clear. In this
paper we will first show numerically that the number of solutions universally
follows a lognormal distribution, thereby explaining the puzzling question of
why the number of solutions is still exponential at the critical point.
Moreover we provide evidence that the hardness of the closely related problem
of counting the total number of solutions does not show any phase
transition-like behavior. This raises the question of whether the probability
of finding a satisfiable instance is really an order parameter of a phase
transition or whether it is more likely to just show a simple sharp threshold
phenomenon. More generally, this paper aims at starting a discussion where a
simple sharp threshold phenomenon turns into a genuine phase transition
Phase Transitions of the Typical Algorithmic Complexity of the Random Satisfiability Problem Studied with Linear Programming
Here we study the NP-complete -SAT problem. Although the worst-case
complexity of NP-complete problems is conjectured to be exponential, there
exist parametrized random ensembles of problems where solutions can typically
be found in polynomial time for suitable ranges of the parameter. In fact,
random -SAT, with as control parameter, can be solved quickly
for small enough values of . It shows a phase transition between a
satisfiable phase and an unsatisfiable phase. For branch and bound algorithms,
which operate in the space of feasible Boolean configurations, the empirically
hardest problems are located only close to this phase transition. Here we study
-SAT () and the related optimization problem MAX-SAT by a linear
programming approach, which is widely used for practical problems and allows
for polynomial run time. In contrast to branch and bound it operates outside
the space of feasible configurations. On the other hand, finding a solution
within polynomial time is not guaranteed. We investigated several variants like
including artificial objective functions, so called cutting-plane approaches,
and a mapping to the NP-complete vertex-cover problem. We observed several
easy-hard transitions, from where the problems are typically solvable (in
polynomial time) using the given algorithms, respectively, to where they are
not solvable in polynomial time. For the related vertex-cover problem on random
graphs these easy-hard transitions can be identified with structural properties
of the graphs, like percolation transitions. For the present random -SAT
problem we have investigated numerous structural properties also exhibiting
clear transitions, but they appear not be correlated to the here observed
easy-hard transitions. This renders the behaviour of random -SAT more
complex than, e.g., the vertex-cover problem.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figure
On the Complexity of Digraph Colourings and Vertex Arboricity
It has been shown by Bokal et al. that deciding 2-colourability of digraphs
is an NP-complete problem. This result was later on extended by Feder et al. to
prove that deciding whether a digraph has a circular -colouring is
NP-complete for all rational . In this paper, we consider the complexity
of corresponding decision problems for related notions of fractional colourings
for digraphs and graphs, including the star dichromatic number, the fractional
dichromatic number and the circular vertex arboricity. We prove the following
results:
Deciding if the star dichromatic number of a digraph is at most is
NP-complete for every rational .
Deciding if the fractional dichromatic number of a digraph is at most is
NP-complete for every .
Deciding if the circular vertex arboricity of a graph is at most is
NP-complete for every rational .
To show these results, different techniques are required in each case. In
order to prove the first result, we relate the star dichromatic number to a new
notion of homomorphisms between digraphs, called circular homomorphisms, which
might be of independent interest. We provide a classification of the
computational complexities of the corresponding homomorphism colouring problems
similar to the one derived by Feder et al. for acyclic homomorphisms.Comment: 21 pages, 1 figur
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