65 research outputs found
The Strahler number of a parity game
The Strahler number of a rooted tree is the largest height of a perfect binary tree that is its minor. The Strahler number of a parity game is proposed to be defined as the smallest Strahler number of the tree of any of its attractor decompositions. It is proved that parity games can be solved in quasi-linear space and in time that is polynomial in the number of vertices~n and linear in (d/2k)k, where d is the number of priorities and k is the Strahler number. This complexity is quasi-polynomial because the Strahler number is at most logarithmic in the number of vertices. The proof is based on a new construction of small Strahler-universal trees.
It is shown that the Strahler number of a parity game is a robust parameter: it coincides with its alternative version based on trees of progress measures and with the register number defined by Lehtinen~(2018). It follows that parity games can be solved in quasi-linear space and in time that is polynomial in the number of vertices and linear in (d/2k)k, where k is the register number. This significantly improves the running times and space achieved for parity games of bounded register number by Lehtinen (2018) and by Parys (2020).
The running time of the algorithm based on small Strahler-universal trees yields a novel trade-off k⋅lg(d/k)=O(logn) between the two natural parameters that measure the structural complexity of a parity game, which allows solving parity games in polynomial time. This includes as special cases the asymptotic settings of those parameters covered by the results of Calude, Jain Khoussainov, Li, and Stephan (2017), of Jurdziński and Lazić (2017), and of Lehtinen (2018), and it significantly extends the range of such settings, for example to d=2O(lgn√) and k=O(lgn−√)
The Theory of Universal Graphs for Infinite Duration Games
We introduce the notion of universal graphs as a tool for constructing
algorithms solving games of infinite duration such as parity games and mean
payoff games. In the first part we develop the theory of universal graphs, with
two goals: showing an equivalence and normalisation result between different
recently introduced related models, and constructing generic value iteration
algorithms for any positionally determined objective. In the second part we
give four applications: to parity games, to mean payoff games, and to
combinations of them (in the form of disjunctions of objectives). For each of
these four cases we construct algorithms achieving or improving over the best
known time and space complexity.Comment: 43 pages, 10 figure
On linear, fractional, and submodular optimization
In this thesis, we study four fundamental problems in the theory of optimization. 1. In fractional optimization, we are interested in minimizing a ratio of two functions over some domain. A well-known technique for solving this problem is the Newton– Dinkelbach method. We propose an accelerated version of this classical method and give a new analysis using the Bregman divergence. We show how it leads to improved or simplified results in three application areas. 2. The diameter of a polyhedron is the maximum length of a shortest path between any two vertices. The circuit diameter is a relaxation of this notion, whereby shortest paths are not restricted to edges of the polyhedron. For a polyhedron in standard equality form with constraint matrix A, we prove an upper bound on the circuit diameter that is quadratic in the rank of A and logarithmic in the circuit imbalance measure of A. We also give circuit augmentation algorithms for linear programming with similar iteration complexity. 3. The correlation gap of a set function is the ratio between its multilinear and concave extensions. We present improved lower bounds on the correlation gap of a matroid rank function, parametrized by the rank and girth of the matroid. We also prove that for a weighted matroid rank function, the worst correlation gap is achieved with uniform weights. Such improved lower bounds have direct applications in submodular maximization and mechanism design. 4. The last part of this thesis concerns parity games, a problem intimately related to linear programming. A parity game is an infinite-duration game between two players on a graph. The problem of deciding the winner lies in NP and co-NP, with no known polynomial algorithm to date. Many of the fastest (quasi-polynomial) algorithms have been unified via the concept of a universal tree. We propose a strategy iteration framework which can be applied on any universal tree
A Universal Attractor Decomposition Algorithm for Parity Games
An attractor decomposition meta-algorithm for solving parity games is given
that generalizes the classic McNaughton-Zielonka algorithm and its recent
quasi-polynomial variants due to Parys (2019), and to Lehtinen, Schewe, and
Wojtczak (2019). The central concepts studied and exploited are attractor
decompositions of dominia in parity games and the ordered trees that describe
the inductive structure of attractor decompositions.
The main technical results include the embeddable decomposition theorem and
the dominion separation theorem that together help establish a precise
structural condition for the correctness of the universal algorithm: it
suffices that the two ordered trees given to the algorithm as inputs embed the
trees of some attractor decompositions of the largest dominia for each of the
two players, respectively.
The universal algorithm yields McNaughton-Zielonka, Parys's, and
Lehtinen-Schewe-Wojtczak algorithms as special cases when suitable universal
trees are given to it as inputs. The main technical results provide a unified
proof of correctness and deep structural insights into those algorithms.
A symbolic implementation of the universal algorithm is also given that
improves the symbolic space complexity of solving parity games in
quasi-polynomial time from ---achieved by Chatterjee,
Dvo\v{r}\'{a}k, Henzinger, and Svozil (2018)---down to , where is
the number of vertices and is the number of distinct priorities in a parity
game. This not only exponentially improves the dependence on , but it also
entirely removes the dependence on
A Technique to Speed up Symmetric Attractor-Based Algorithms for Parity Games
The classic McNaughton-Zielonka algorithm for solving parity games has excellent performance in practice, but its worst-case asymptotic complexity is worse than that of the state-of-the-art algorithms. This work pinpoints the mechanism that is responsible for this relative underperformance and proposes a new technique that eliminates it. The culprit is the wasteful manner in which the results obtained from recursive calls are indiscriminately discarded by the algorithm whenever subgames on which the algorithm is run change. Our new technique is based on firstly enhancing the algorithm to compute attractor decompositions of subgames instead of just winning strategies on them, and then on making it carefully use attractor decompositions computed in prior recursive calls to reduce the size of subgames on which further recursive calls are made. We illustrate the new technique on the classic example of the recursive McNaughton-Zielonka algorithm, but it can be applied to other symmetric attractor-based algorithms that were inspired by it, such as the quasi-polynomial versions of the McNaughton-Zielonka algorithm based on universal trees
REGISTER GAMES
The complexity of parity games is a long standing open problem that saw a
major breakthrough in 2017 when two quasi-polynomial algorithms were published.
This article presents a third, independent approach to solving parity games in
quasi-polynomial time, based on the notion of register game, a parameterised
variant of a parity game. The analysis of register games leads to a
quasi-polynomial algorithm for parity games, a polynomial algorithm for
restricted classes of parity games and a novel measure of complexity, the
register index, which aims to capture the combined complexity of the priority
assignement and the underlying game graph.
We further present a translation of alternating parity word automata into
alternating weak automata with only a quasi-polynomial increase in size, based
on register games; this improves on the previous exponential translation.
We also use register games to investigate the parity index hierarchy: while
for words the index hierarchy of alternating parity automata collapses to the
weak level, and for trees it is strict, for structures between trees and words,
it collapses logarithmically, in the sense that any parity tree automaton of
size n is equivalent, on these particular classes of structures, to an
automaton with a number of priorities logarithmic in n
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