Approximate the k-Set Packing Problem by Local Improvements

We study algorithms based on local improvements for the $k$-Set Packing problem. The well-known local improvement algorithm by Hurkens and Schrijver has been improved by Sviridenko and Ward from $frac{k}{2}+epsilon$ to $frac{k+2}{3}$, and by Cygan to $frac{k+1}{3}+epsilon$ for any $epsilon>0$. In this paper, we achieve the approximation ratio $frac{k+1}{3}+epsilon$ for the $k$-Set Packing problem using a simple polynomial-time algorithm based on the method by Sviridenko and Ward. With the same approximation guarantee, our algorithm runs in time singly exponential in $frac{1}{epsilon^2}$, while the running time of Cygans algorithm is doubly exponential in $frac{1}{epsilon}$. On the other hand, we construct an instance with locality gap $frac{k+1}{3}$ for any algorithm using local improvements of size $O(n^{1/5})$, here $n$ is the total number of sets. Thus, our approximation guarantee is optimal with respect to results achievable by algorithms based on local improvements.