4,570 research outputs found
Hardness of Vertex Deletion and Project Scheduling
Assuming the Unique Games Conjecture, we show strong inapproximability
results for two natural vertex deletion problems on directed graphs: for any
integer and arbitrary small , the Feedback Vertex Set
problem and the DAG Vertex Deletion problem are inapproximable within a factor
even on graphs where the vertices can be almost partitioned into
solutions. This gives a more structured and therefore stronger UGC-based
hardness result for the Feedback Vertex Set problem that is also simpler
(albeit using the "It Ain't Over Till It's Over" theorem) than the previous
hardness result.
In comparison to the classical Feedback Vertex Set problem, the DAG Vertex
Deletion problem has received little attention and, although we think it is a
natural and interesting problem, the main motivation for our inapproximability
result stems from its relationship with the classical Discrete Time-Cost
Tradeoff Problem. More specifically, our results imply that the deadline
version is NP-hard to approximate within any constant assuming the Unique Games
Conjecture. This explains the difficulty in obtaining good approximation
algorithms for that problem and further motivates previous alternative
approaches such as bicriteria approximations.Comment: 18 pages, 1 figur
Min (A)cyclic Feedback Vertex Sets and Min Ones Monotone 3-SAT
In directed graphs, we investigate the problems of finding: 1) a minimum
feedback vertex set (also called the Feedback Vertex Set problem, or MFVS), 2)
a feedback vertex set inducing an acyclic graph (also called the Vertex
2-Coloring without Monochromatic Cycles problem, or Acyclic FVS) and 3) a
minimum feedback vertex set inducing an acyclic graph (Acyclic MFVS).
We show that these problems are strongly related to (variants of) Monotone
3-SAT and Monotone NAE 3-SAT, where monotone means that all literals are in
positive form. As a consequence, we deduce several NP-completeness results on
restricted versions of these problems. In particular, we define the 2-Choice
version of an optimization problem to be its restriction where the optimum
value is known to be either D or D+1 for some integer D, and the problem is
reduced to decide which of D or D+1 is the optimum value. We show that the
2-Choice versions of MFVS, Acyclic MFVS, Min Ones Monotone 3-SAT and Min Ones
Monotone NAE 3-SAT are NP-complete. The two latter problems are the variants of
Monotone 3-SAT and respectively Monotone NAE 3-SAT requiring that the truth
assignment minimize the number of variables set to true.
Finally, we propose two classes of directed graphs for which Acyclic FVS is
polynomially solvable, namely flow reducible graphs (for which MFVS is already
known to be polynomially solvable) and C1P-digraphs (defined by an adjacency
matrix with the Consecutive Ones Property)
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