85 research outputs found
Gap Amplification for Small-Set Expansion via Random Walks
In this work, we achieve gap amplification for the Small-Set Expansion
problem. Specifically, we show that an instance of the Small-Set Expansion
Problem with completeness and soundness is at least as
difficult as Small-Set Expansion with completeness and soundness
, for any function which grows faster than
. We achieve this amplification via random walks -- our gadget
is the graph with adjacency matrix corresponding to a random walk on the
original graph. An interesting feature of our reduction is that unlike gap
amplification via parallel repetition, the size of the instances (number of
vertices) produced by the reduction remains the same
A New Regularity Lemma and Faster Approximation Algorithms for Low Threshold Rank Graphs
Kolla and Tulsiani [KT07,Kolla11} and Arora, Barak and Steurer [ABS10]
introduced the technique of subspace enumeration, which gives approximation
algorithms for graph problems such as unique games and small set expansion; the
running time of such algorithms is exponential in the threshold-rank of the
graph.
Guruswami and Sinop [GS11,GS12], and Barak, Raghavendra, and Steurer [BRS11]
developed an alternative approach to the design of approximation algorithms for
graphs of bounded threshold-rank, based on semidefinite programming relaxations
in the Lassere hierarchy and on novel rounding techniques. These algorithms are
faster than the ones based on subspace enumeration and work on a broad class of
problems.
In this paper we develop a third approach to the design of such algorithms.
We show, constructively, that graphs of bounded threshold-rank satisfy a weak
Szemeredi regularity lemma analogous to the one proved by Frieze and Kannan
[FK99] for dense graphs. The existence of efficient approximation algorithms is
then a consequence of the regularity lemma, as shown by Frieze and Kannan.
Applying our method to the Max Cut problem, we devise an algorithm that is
faster than all previous algorithms, and is easier to describe and analyze
Many Sparse Cuts via Higher Eigenvalues
Cheeger's fundamental inequality states that any edge-weighted graph has a
vertex subset such that its expansion (a.k.a. conductance) is bounded as
follows: \phi(S) \defeq \frac{w(S,\bar{S})}{\min \set{w(S), w(\bar{S})}}
\leq 2\sqrt{\lambda_2} where is the total edge weight of a subset or a
cut and is the second smallest eigenvalue of the normalized
Laplacian of the graph. Here we prove the following natural generalization: for
any integer , there exist disjoint subsets ,
such that where
is the smallest eigenvalue of the normalized Laplacian and
are suitable absolute constants. Our proof is via a polynomial-time
algorithm to find such subsets, consisting of a spectral projection and a
randomized rounding. As a consequence, we get the same upper bound for the
small set expansion problem, namely for any , there is a subset whose
weight is at most a \bigO(1/k) fraction of the total weight and . Both results are the best possible up to constant
factors.
The underlying algorithmic problem, namely finding subsets such that the
maximum expansion is minimized, besides extending sparse cuts to more than one
subset, appears to be a natural clustering problem in its own right
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