No Arabic abstract
We consider high dimensional variants of the maximum flow and minimum cut problems in the setting of simplicial complexes and provide both algorithmic and hardness results. By viewing flows and cuts topologically in terms of the simplicial (co)boundary operator we can state these problems as linear programs and show that they are dual to one another. Unlike graphs, complexes with integral capacity constraints may have fractional max-flows. We show that computing a maximum integral flow is NP-hard. Moreover, we give a combinatorial definition of a simplicial cut that seems more natural in the context of optimization problems and show that computing such a cut is NP-hard. However, we provide conditions on the simplicial complex for when the cut found by the linear program is a combinatorial cut. For $d$-dimensional simplicial complexes embedded into $mathbb{R}^{d+1}$ we provide algorithms operating on the dual graph: computing a maximum flow is dual to computing a shortest path and computing a minimum cut is dual to computing a minimum cost circulation. Finally, we investigate the Ford-Fulkerson algorithm on simplicial complexes, prove its correctness, and provide a heuristic which guarantees it to halt.
We give an algorithm to find a mincut in an $n$-vertex, $m$-edge weighted directed graph using $tilde O(sqrt{n})$ calls to any maxflow subroutine. Using state of the art maxflow algorithms, this yields a directed mincut algorithm that runs in $tilde O(msqrt{n} + n^2)$ time. This improves on the 30 year old bound of $tilde O(mn)$ obtained by Hao and Orlin for this problem.
In this paper we present a new data structure for double ended priority queue, called min-max fine heap, which combines the techniques used in fine heap and traditional min-max heap. The standard operations on this proposed structure are also presented, and their analysis indicates that the new structure outperforms the traditional one.
We provide a random simplicial complex by applying standard constructions to a Poisson point process in Euclidean space. It is gigantic in the sense that - up to homotopy equivalence - it almost surely contains infinitely many copies of every compact topological manifold, both in isolation and in percolation.
The restricted max-min fair allocation problem seeks an allocation of resources to players that maximizes the minimum total value obtained by any player. It is NP-hard to approximate the problem to a ratio less than 2. Comparing the current best algorithm for estimating the optimal value with the current best for constructing an allocation, there is quite a gap between the ratios that can be achieved in polynomial time: roughly 4 for estimation and roughly $6 + 2sqrt{10}$ for construction. We propose an algorithm that constructs an allocation with value within a factor of $6 + delta$ from the optimum for any constant $delta > 0$. The running time is polynomial in the input size for any constant $delta$ chosen.
In the ${-1,0,1}$-APSP problem the goal is to compute all-pairs shortest paths (APSP) on a directed graph whose edge weights are all from ${-1,0,1}$. In the (min,max)-product problem the input is two $ntimes n$ matrices $A$ and $B$, and the goal is to output the (min,max)-product of $A$ and $B$. This paper provides a new algorithm for the ${-1,0,1}$-APSP problem via a simple reduction to the target-(min,max)-product problem where the input is three $ntimes n$ matrices $A,B$, and $T$, and the goal is to output a Boolean $ntimes n$ matrix $C$ such that the $(i,j)$ entry of $C$ is 1 if and only if the $(i,j)$ entry of the (min,max)-product of $A$ and $B$ is exactly the $(i,j)$ entry of the target matrix $T$. If (min,max)-product can be solved in $T_{MM}(n) = Omega(n^2)$ time then it is straightforward to solve target-(min,max)-product in $O(T_{MM}(n))$ time. Thus, given the recent result of Bringmann, Kunnemann, and Wegrzycki [STOC 2019], the ${-1,0,1}$-APSP problem can be solved in the same time needed for solving approximate APSP on graphs with positive weights. Moreover, we design a simple algorithm for target-(min,max)-product when the inputs are restricted to the family of inputs generated by our reduction. Using fast rectangular matrix multiplication, the new algorithm is faster than the current best known algorithm for (min,max)-product.