12 research outputs found
Bilu-Linial Stable Instances of Max Cut and Minimum Multiway Cut
We investigate the notion of stability proposed by Bilu and Linial. We obtain
an exact polynomial-time algorithm for -stable Max Cut instances with
for some absolute constant . Our
algorithm is robust: it never returns an incorrect answer; if the instance is
-stable, it finds the maximum cut, otherwise, it either finds the
maximum cut or certifies that the instance is not -stable. We prove
that there is no robust polynomial-time algorithm for -stable instances
of Max Cut when , where is the best
approximation factor for Sparsest Cut with non-uniform demands.
Our algorithm is based on semidefinite programming. We show that the standard
SDP relaxation for Max Cut (with triangle inequalities) is integral
if , where
is the least distortion with which every point metric space of negative
type embeds into . On the negative side, we show that the SDP
relaxation is not integral when .
Moreover, there is no tractable convex relaxation for -stable instances
of Max Cut when . That suggests that solving
-stable instances with might be difficult or
impossible.
Our results significantly improve previously known results. The best
previously known algorithm for -stable instances of Max Cut required
that (for some ) [Bilu, Daniely, Linial, and
Saks]. No hardness results were known for the problem. Additionally, we present
an algorithm for 4-stable instances of Minimum Multiway Cut. We also study a
relaxed notion of weak stability.Comment: 24 page
Constant Factor Approximation for Balanced Cut in the PIE model
We propose and study a new semi-random semi-adversarial model for Balanced
Cut, a planted model with permutation-invariant random edges (PIE). Our model
is much more general than planted models considered previously. Consider a set
of vertices V partitioned into two clusters and of equal size. Let
be an arbitrary graph on with no edges between and . Let
be a set of edges sampled from an arbitrary permutation-invariant
distribution (a distribution that is invariant under permutation of vertices in
and in ). Then we say that is a graph with
permutation-invariant random edges.
We present an approximation algorithm for the Balanced Cut problem that finds
a balanced cut of cost in this model.
In the regime when , this is a
constant factor approximation with respect to the cost of the planted cut.Comment: Full version of the paper at the 46th ACM Symposium on the Theory of
Computing (STOC 2014). 32 page