2,428 research outputs found
Parameterized Approximation Schemes using Graph Widths
Combining the techniques of approximation algorithms and parameterized
complexity has long been considered a promising research area, but relatively
few results are currently known. In this paper we study the parameterized
approximability of a number of problems which are known to be hard to solve
exactly when parameterized by treewidth or clique-width. Our main contribution
is to present a natural randomized rounding technique that extends well-known
ideas and can be used for both of these widths. Applying this very generic
technique we obtain approximation schemes for a number of problems, evading
both polynomial-time inapproximability and parameterized intractability bounds
Ising formulations of many NP problems
We provide Ising formulations for many NP-complete and NP-hard problems,
including all of Karp's 21 NP-complete problems. This collects and extends
mappings to the Ising model from partitioning, covering and satisfiability. In
each case, the required number of spins is at most cubic in the size of the
problem. This work may be useful in designing adiabatic quantum optimization
algorithms.Comment: 27 pages; v2: substantial revision to intro/conclusion, many more
references; v3: substantial revision and extension, to-be-published versio
Quantum complexities of ordered searching, sorting, and element distinctness
We consider the quantum complexities of the following three problems:
searching an ordered list, sorting an un-ordered list, and deciding whether the
numbers in a list are all distinct. Letting N be the number of elements in the
input list, we prove a lower bound of \frac{1}{\pi}(\ln(N)-1) accesses to the
list elements for ordered searching, a lower bound of \Omega(N\log{N}) binary
comparisons for sorting, and a lower bound of \Omega(\sqrt{N}\log{N}) binary
comparisons for element distinctness. The previously best known lower bounds
are {1/12}\log_2(N) - O(1) due to Ambainis, \Omega(N), and \Omega(\sqrt{N}),
respectively. Our proofs are based on a weighted all-pairs inner product
argument.
In addition to our lower bound results, we give a quantum algorithm for
ordered searching using roughly 0.631 \log_2(N) oracle accesses. Our algorithm
uses a quantum routine for traversing through a binary search tree faster than
classically, and it is of a nature very different from a faster algorithm due
to Farhi, Goldstone, Gutmann, and Sipser.Comment: This new version contains new results. To appear at ICALP '01. Some
of the results have previously been presented at QIP '01. This paper subsumes
the papers quant-ph/0009091 and quant-ph/000903
- …