4 research outputs found
On the Complexity of Closest Pair via Polar-Pair of Point-Sets
Every graph G can be represented by a collection of equi-radii spheres in a d-dimensional metric Delta such that there is an edge uv in G if and only if the spheres corresponding to u and v intersect. The smallest integer d such that G can be represented by a collection of spheres (all of the same radius) in Delta is called the sphericity of G, and if the collection of spheres are non-overlapping, then the value d is called the contact-dimension of G. In this paper, we study the sphericity and contact dimension of the complete bipartite graph K_{n,n} in various L^p-metrics and consequently connect the complexity of the monochromatic closest pair and bichromatic closest pair problems
On Closest Pair in Euclidean Metric: Monochromatic is as Hard as Bichromatic
Given a set of n points in R^d, the (monochromatic) Closest Pair problem asks to find a pair of distinct points in the set that are closest in the l_p-metric. Closest Pair is a fundamental problem in Computational Geometry and understanding its fine-grained complexity in the Euclidean metric when d=omega(log n) was raised as an open question in recent works (Abboud-Rubinstein-Williams [FOCS\u2717], Williams [SODA\u2718], David-Karthik-Laekhanukit [SoCG\u2718]).
In this paper, we show that for every p in R_{>= 1} cup {0}, under the Strong Exponential Time Hypothesis (SETH), for every epsilon>0, the following holds:
- No algorithm running in time O(n^{2-epsilon}) can solve the Closest Pair problem in d=(log n)^{Omega_{epsilon}(1)} dimensions in the l_p-metric.
- There exists delta = delta(epsilon)>0 and c = c(epsilon)>= 1 such that no algorithm running in time O(n^{1.5-epsilon}) can approximate Closest Pair problem to a factor of (1+delta) in d >= c log n dimensions in the l_p-metric.
In particular, our first result is shown by establishing the computational equivalence of the bichromatic Closest Pair problem and the (monochromatic) Closest Pair problem (up to n^{epsilon} factor in the running time) for d=(log n)^{Omega_epsilon(1)} dimensions.
Additionally, under SETH, we rule out nearly-polynomial factor approximation algorithms running in subquadratic time for the (monochromatic) Maximum Inner Product problem where we are given a set of n points in n^{o(1)}-dimensional Euclidean space and are required to find a pair of distinct points in the set that maximize the inner product.
At the heart of all our proofs is the construction of a dense bipartite graph with low contact dimension, i.e., we construct a balanced bipartite graph on n vertices with n^{2-epsilon} edges whose vertices can be realized as points in a (log n)^{Omega_epsilon(1)}-dimensional Euclidean space such that every pair of vertices which have an edge in the graph are at distance exactly 1 and every other pair of vertices are at distance greater than 1. This graph construction is inspired by the construction of locally dense codes introduced by Dumer-Miccancio-Sudan [IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory\u2703]
Hardness of Approximate Nearest Neighbor Search
We prove conditional near-quadratic running time lower bounds for approximate
Bichromatic Closest Pair with Euclidean, Manhattan, Hamming, or edit distance.
Specifically, unless the Strong Exponential Time Hypothesis (SETH) is false,
for every there exists a constant such that computing a
-approximation to the Bichromatic Closest Pair requires
time. In particular, this implies a near-linear query time for
Approximate Nearest Neighbor search with polynomial preprocessing time.
Our reduction uses the Distributed PCP framework of [ARW'17], but obtains
improved efficiency using Algebraic Geometry (AG) codes. Efficient PCPs from AG
codes have been constructed in other settings before [BKKMS'16, BCGRS'17], but
our construction is the first to yield new hardness results