No Arabic abstract
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 $epsilon$ and soundness $frac{1}{2}$ is at least as difficult as Small-Set Expansion with completeness $epsilon$ and soundness $f(epsilon)$, for any function $f(epsilon)$ which grows faster than $sqrt{epsilon}$. 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.
We give a deterministic, nearly logarithmic-space algorithm that given an undirected graph $G$, a positive integer $r$, and a set $S$ of vertices, approximates the conductance of $S$ in the $r$-step random walk on $G$ to within a factor of $1+epsilon$, where $epsilon>0$ is an arbitrarily small constant. More generally, our algorithm computes an $epsilon$-spectral approximation to the normalized Laplacian of the $r$-step walk. Our algorithm combines the derandomized square graph operation (Rozenman and Vadhan, 2005), which we recently used for solving Laplacian systems in nearly logarithmic space (Murtagh, Reingold, Sidford, and Vadhan, 2017), with ideas from (Cheng, Cheng, Liu, Peng, and Teng, 2015), which gave an algorithm that is time-efficient (while ours is space-efficient) and randomized (while ours is deterministic) for the case of even $r$ (while ours works for all $r$). Along the way, we provide some new results that generalize technical machinery and yield improvements over previous work. First, we obtain a nearly linear-time randomized algorithm for computing a spectral approximation to the normalized Laplacian for odd $r$. Second, we define and analyze a generalization of the derandomized square for irregular graphs and for sparsifying the product of two distinct graphs. As part of this generalization, we also give a strongly explicit construction of expander graphs of every size.
We provide a deterministic $tilde{O}(log N)$-space algorithm for estimating random walk probabilities on undirected graphs, and more generally Eulerian directed graphs, to within inverse polynomial additive error ($epsilon=1/mathrm{poly}(N)$) where $N$ is the length of the input. Previously, this problem was known to be solvable by a randomized algorithm using space $O(log N)$ (following Aleliunas et al., FOCS 79) and by a deterministic algorithm using space $O(log^{3/2} N)$ (Saks and Zhou, FOCS 95 and JCSS 99), both of which held for arbitrary directed graphs but had not been improved even for undirected graphs. We also give improvements on the space complexity of both of these previous algorithms for non-Eulerian directed graphs when the error is negligible ($epsilon=1/N^{omega(1)}$), generalizing what Hoza and Zuckerman (FOCS 18) recently showed for the special case of distinguishing whether a random walk probability is $0$ or greater than $epsilon$. We achieve these results by giving new reductions between powering Eulerian random-walk matrices and inverting Eulerian Laplacian matrices, providing a new notion of spectral approximation for Eulerian graphs that is preserved under powering, and giving the first deterministic $tilde{O}(log N)$-space algorithm for inverting Eulerian Laplacian matrices. The latter algorithm builds on the work of Murtagh et al. (FOCS 17) that gave a deterministic $tilde{O}(log N)$-space algorithm for inverting undirected Laplacian matrices, and the work of Cohen et al. (FOCS 19) that gave a randomized $tilde{O}(N)$-time algorithm for inverting Eulerian Laplacian matrices. A running theme throughout these contributions is an analysis of cycle-lifted graphs, where we take a graph and lift it to a new graph whose adjacency matrix is the tensor product of the original adjacency matrix and a directed cycle (or variants of one).
We study the NP-hard textsc{$k$-Sparsest Cut} problem ($k$SC) in which, given an undirected graph $G = (V, E)$ and a parameter $k$, the objective is to partition vertex set into $k$ subsets whose maximum edge expansion is minimized. Herein, the edge expansion of a subset $S subseteq V$ is defined as the sum of the weights of edges exiting $S$ divided by the number of vertices in $S$. Another problem that has been investigated is textsc{$k$-Small-Set Expansion} problem ($k$SSE), which aims to find a subset with minimum edge expansion with a restriction on the size of the subset. We extend previous studies on $k$SC and $k$SSE by inspecting their parameterized complexity. On the positive side, we present two FPT algorithms for both $k$SSE and 2SC problems where in the first algorithm we consider the parameter treewidth of the input graph and uses exponential space, and in the second we consider the parameter vertex cover number of the input graph and uses polynomial space. Moreover, we consider the unweighted version of the $k$SC problem where $k geq 2$ is fixed and proposed two FPT algorithms with parameters treewidth and vertex cover number of the input graph. We also propose a randomized FPT algorithm for $k$SSE when parameterized by $k$ and the maximum degree of the input graph combined. Its derandomization is done efficiently. oindent On the negative side, first we prove that for every fixed integer $k,taugeq 3$, the problem $k$SC is NP-hard for graphs with vertex cover number at most $tau$. We also show that $k$SC is W[1]-hard when parameterized by the treewidth of the input graph and the number~$k$ of components combined using a reduction from textsc{Unary Bin Packing}. Furthermore, we prove that $k$SC remains NP-hard for graphs with maximum degree three and also graphs with degeneracy two. Finally, we prove that the unweighted $k$SSE is W[1]-hard for the parameter $k$.
Dinur, Khot, Kindler, Minzer and Safra (2016) recently showed that the (imperfect completeness variant of) Khots 2 to 2 games conjecture follows from a combinatorial hypothesis about the soundness of a certain Grassmanian agreement tester. In this work, we show that the hypothesis of Dinur et. al. follows from a conjecture we call the Inverse Shortcode Hypothesis characterizing the non-expanding sets of the degree-two shortcode graph. We also show the latter conjecture is equivalent to a characterization of the non-expanding sets in the Grassman graph, as hypothesized by a follow-up paper of Dinur et. al. (2017). Following our work, Khot, Minzer and Safra (2018) proved the Inverse Shortcode Hypothesis. Combining their proof with our result and the reduction of Dinur et. al. (2016), completes the proof of the 2 to 2 conjecture with imperfect completeness. Moreover, we believe that the shortcode graph provides a useful view of both the hypothesis and the reduction, and might be useful in extending it further.
In the $d$-Scattered Set problem we are asked to select at least $k$ vertices of a given graph, so that the distance between any pair is at least $d$. We study the problems (in-)approximability and offer improvements and extensions of known results for Independent Set, of which the problem is a generalization. Specifically, we show: - A lower bound of $Delta^{lfloor d/2rfloor-epsilon}$ on the approximation ratio of any polynomial-time algorithm for graphs of maximum degree $Delta$ and an improved upper bound of $O(Delta^{lfloor d/2rfloor})$ on the approximation ratio of any greedy scheme for this problem. - A polynomial-time $2sqrt{n}$-approximation for bipartite graphs and even values of $d$, that matches the known lower bound by considering the only remaining case. - A lower bound on the complexity of any $rho$-approximation algorithm of (roughly) $2^{frac{n^{1-epsilon}}{rho d}}$ for even $d$ and $2^{frac{n^{1-epsilon}}{rho(d+rho)}}$ for odd $d$ (under the randomized ETH), complemented by $rho$-approximation algorithms of running times that (almost) match these bounds.