382 research outputs found
Lower Bounds on the van der Waerden Numbers: Randomized- and Deterministic-Constructive
The van der Waerden number W(k,2) is the smallest integer n such that every
2-coloring of 1 to n has a monochromatic arithmetic progression of length k.
The existence of such an n for any k is due to van der Waerden but known upper
bounds on W(k,2) are enormous. Much effort was put into developing lower bounds
on W(k,2). Most of these lower bound proofs employ the probabilistic method
often in combination with the Lov\'asz Local Lemma. While these proofs show the
existence of a 2-coloring that has no monochromatic arithmetic progression of
length k they provide no efficient algorithm to find such a coloring. These
kind of proofs are often informally called nonconstructive in contrast to
constructive proofs that provide an efficient algorithm.
This paper clarifies these notions and gives definitions for deterministic-
and randomized-constructive proofs as different types of constructive proofs.
We then survey the literature on lower bounds on W(k,2) in this light. We show
how known nonconstructive lower bound proofs based on the Lov\'asz Local Lemma
can be made randomized-constructive using the recent algorithms of Moser and
Tardos. We also use a derandomization of Chandrasekaran, Goyal and Haeupler to
transform these proofs into deterministic-constructive proofs. We provide
greatly simplified and fully self-contained proofs and descriptions for these
algorithms
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