4,168 research outputs found
An Atypical Survey of Typical-Case Heuristic Algorithms
Heuristic approaches often do so well that they seem to pretty much always
give the right answer. How close can heuristic algorithms get to always giving
the right answer, without inducing seismic complexity-theoretic consequences?
This article first discusses how a series of results by Berman, Buhrman,
Hartmanis, Homer, Longpr\'{e}, Ogiwara, Sch\"{o}ening, and Watanabe, from the
early 1970s through the early 1990s, explicitly or implicitly limited how well
heuristic algorithms can do on NP-hard problems. In particular, many desirable
levels of heuristic success cannot be obtained unless severe, highly unlikely
complexity class collapses occur. Second, we survey work initiated by Goldreich
and Wigderson, who showed how under plausible assumptions deterministic
heuristics for randomized computation can achieve a very high frequency of
correctness. Finally, we consider formal ways in which theory can help explain
the effectiveness of heuristics that solve NP-hard problems in practice.Comment: This article is currently scheduled to appear in the December 2012
issue of SIGACT New
A quantum-walk-inspired adiabatic algorithm for graph isomorphism
We present a 2-local quantum algorithm for graph isomorphism GI based on an
adiabatic protocol. By exploiting continuous-time quantum-walks, we are able to
avoid a mere diffusion over all possible configurations and to significantly
reduce the dimensionality of the visited space. Within this restricted space,
the graph isomorphism problem can be translated into the search of a satisfying
assignment to a 2-SAT formula without resorting to perturbation gadgets or
projective techniques. We present an analysis of the execution time of the
algorithm on small instances of the graph isomorphism problem and discuss the
issue of an implementation of the proposed adiabatic scheme on current quantum
computing hardware.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figure
Orbitopal Fixing
The topic of this paper are integer programming models in which a subset of
0/1-variables encode a partitioning of a set of objects into disjoint subsets.
Such models can be surprisingly hard to solve by branch-and-cut algorithms if
the order of the subsets of the partition is irrelevant, since this kind of
symmetry unnecessarily blows up the search tree. We present a general tool,
called orbitopal fixing, for enhancing the capabilities of branch-and-cut
algorithms in solving such symmetric integer programming models. We devise a
linear time algorithm that, applied at each node of the search tree, removes
redundant parts of the tree produced by the above mentioned symmetry. The
method relies on certain polyhedra, called orbitopes, which have been
introduced bei Kaibel and Pfetsch (Math. Programm. A, 114 (2008), 1-36). It
does, however, not explicitly add inequalities to the model. Instead, it uses
certain fixing rules for variables. We demonstrate the computational power of
orbitopal fixing at the example of a graph partitioning problem.Comment: 22 pages, revised and extended version of a previous version that has
appeared under the same title in Proc. IPCO 200
Search and witness problems in group theory
Decision problems are problems of the following nature: given a property P
and an object O, find out whether or not the object O has the property P. On
the other hand, witness problems are: given a property P and an object O with
the property P, find a proof of the fact that O indeed has the property P. On
the third hand(?!), search problems are of the following nature: given a
property P and an object O with the property P, find something "material"
establishing the property P; for example, given two conjugate elements of a
group, find a conjugator. In this survey our focus is on various search
problems in group theory, including the word search problem, the subgroup
membership search problem, the conjugacy search problem, and others
Subgraph covers -- An information theoretic approach to motif analysis in networks
Many real world networks contain a statistically surprising number of certain
subgraphs, called network motifs. In the prevalent approach to motif analysis,
network motifs are detected by comparing subgraph frequencies in the original
network with a statistical null model. In this paper we propose an alternative
approach to motif analysis where network motifs are defined to be connectivity
patterns that occur in a subgraph cover that represents the network using
minimal total information. A subgraph cover is defined to be a set of subgraphs
such that every edge of the graph is contained in at least one of the subgraphs
in the cover. Some recently introduced random graph models that can incorporate
significant densities of motifs have natural formulations in terms of subgraph
covers and the presented approach can be used to match networks with such
models. To prove the practical value of our approach we also present a
heuristic for the resulting NP-hard optimization problem and give results for
several real world networks.Comment: 10 pages, 7 tables, 1 Figur
Polynomial-Time Algorithms for Quadratic Isomorphism of Polynomials: The Regular Case
Let and be
two sets of nonlinear polynomials over
( being a field). We consider the computational problem of finding
-- if any -- an invertible transformation on the variables mapping
to . The corresponding equivalence problem is known as {\tt
Isomorphism of Polynomials with one Secret} ({\tt IP1S}) and is a fundamental
problem in multivariate cryptography. The main result is a randomized
polynomial-time algorithm for solving {\tt IP1S} for quadratic instances, a
particular case of importance in cryptography and somewhat justifying {\it a
posteriori} the fact that {\it Graph Isomorphism} reduces to only cubic
instances of {\tt IP1S} (Agrawal and Saxena). To this end, we show that {\tt
IP1S} for quadratic polynomials can be reduced to a variant of the classical
module isomorphism problem in representation theory, which involves to test the
orthogonal simultaneous conjugacy of symmetric matrices. We show that we can
essentially {\it linearize} the problem by reducing quadratic-{\tt IP1S} to
test the orthogonal simultaneous similarity of symmetric matrices; this latter
problem was shown by Chistov, Ivanyos and Karpinski to be equivalent to finding
an invertible matrix in the linear space of matrices over and to compute the square root in a matrix
algebra. While computing square roots of matrices can be done efficiently using
numerical methods, it seems difficult to control the bit complexity of such
methods. However, we present exact and polynomial-time algorithms for computing
the square root in for various fields (including
finite fields). We then consider \\#{\tt IP1S}, the counting version of {\tt
IP1S} for quadratic instances. In particular, we provide a (complete)
characterization of the automorphism group of homogeneous quadratic
polynomials. Finally, we also consider the more general {\it Isomorphism of
Polynomials} ({\tt IP}) problem where we allow an invertible linear
transformation on the variables \emph{and} on the set of polynomials. A
randomized polynomial-time algorithm for solving {\tt IP} when
is presented. From an algorithmic point
of view, the problem boils down to factoring the determinant of a linear matrix
(\emph{i.e.}\ a matrix whose components are linear polynomials). This extends
to {\tt IP} a result of Kayal obtained for {\tt PolyProj}.Comment: Published in Journal of Complexity, Elsevier, 2015, pp.3
On the Lattice Isomorphism Problem
We study the Lattice Isomorphism Problem (LIP), in which given two lattices
L_1 and L_2 the goal is to decide whether there exists an orthogonal linear
transformation mapping L_1 to L_2. Our main result is an algorithm for this
problem running in time n^{O(n)} times a polynomial in the input size, where n
is the rank of the input lattices. A crucial component is a new generalized
isolation lemma, which can isolate n linearly independent vectors in a given
subset of Z^n and might be useful elsewhere. We also prove that LIP lies in the
complexity class SZK.Comment: 23 pages, SODA 201
- …