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1. Quasi-polynomial time approximation schemes for the Maximum Weight Independent Set Problem in H-free graphs

   https://doi.org/10.1137/1.9781611975994.139  

   Chudnovsky, Maria. ; Pillipczuk, Marcin. ; Pillipczuk, Mihal ; and Thomasse, Stephan. ( April 2020 , Proceedings of the annual ACMSIAM symposium on discrete algorithms)

   In the Maximum Independent Set problem we are asked to find a set of pairwise nonadjacent vertices in a given graph with the maximum possible cardinality. In general graphs, this classical problem is known to be NP-hard and hard to approximate within a factor of n1−ε for any ε > 0. Due to this, investigating the complexity of Maximum Independent Set in various graph classes in hope of finding better tractability results is an active research direction. In H-free graphs, that is, graphs not containing a fixed graph H as an induced subgraph, the problem is known to remain NP-hardmore »and APX-hard whenever H contains a cycle, a vertex of degree at least four, or two vertices of degree at least three in one connected component. For the remaining cases, where every component of H is a path or a subdivided claw, the complexity of Maximum Independent Set remains widely open, with only a handful of polynomial-time solvability results for small graphs H such as P5, P6, the claw, or the fork. We prove that for every such “possibly tractable” graph H there exists an algorithm that, given an H-free graph G and an accuracy parameter ε > 0, finds an independent set in G of cardinality within a factor of (1 – ε) of the optimum in time exponential in a polynomial of log | V(G) | and ε−1. That is, we show that for every graph H for which Maximum Independent Set is not known to be APX-hard in H-free graphs, the problem admits a quasi-polynomial time approximation scheme in this graph class. Our algorithm works also in the more general weighted setting, where the input graph is supplied with a weight function on vertices and we are maximizing the total weight of an independent set.« less
2. A New Connection Between Node and Edge Depth Robust Graphs

   https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.ITCS.2021.64  

   Blocki, J ; Cinkoske, M. ( January 2021 , ITCS 2021)

   Given a directed acyclic graph (DAG) G=(V,E), we say that G is (e,d)-depth-robust (resp. (e,d)-edge-depth-robust) if for any set S⊆V (resp. S⊆E) of at most |S|≤e nodes (resp. edges) the graph G−S contains a directed path of length d. While edge-depth-robust graphs are potentially easier to construct, many applications in cryptography require node depth-robust graphs with small indegree. We create a graph reduction that transforms an (e,d)-edge-depth-robust graph with m edges into a (e/2,d)-depth-robust graph with O(m) nodes and constant indegree. One immediate consequence of this result is the first construction of a provably (nloglognlogn,nlogn(logn)loglogn)-depth-robust graph with constant indegree. Ourmore »reduction crucially relies on ST-robust graphs, a new graph property we introduce which may be of independent interest. We say that a directed, acyclic graph with n inputs and n outputs is (k1,k2)-ST-robust if we can remove any k1 nodes and there exists a subgraph containing at least k2 inputs and k2 outputs such that each of the k2 inputs is connected to all of the k2 outputs. If the graph if (k1,n−k1)-ST-robust for all k1≤n we say that the graph is maximally ST-robust. We show how to construct maximally ST-robust graphs with constant indegree and O(n) nodes. Given a family M of ST-robust graphs and an arbitrary (e,d)-edge-depth-robust graph G we construct a new constant-indegree graph Reduce(G,M) by replacing each node in G with an ST-robust graph from M. We also show that ST-robust graphs can be used to construct (tight) proofs-of-space and (asymptotically) improved wide-block labeling functions.« less
3. Approximating Cumulative Pebbling Cost Is Unique Games Hard

   https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.ITCS.2020.13  

   Blocki, J ; Lee, S ; Zhou, S. ( January 2020 , Leibniz international proceedings in informatics)

   The cumulative pebbling complexity of a directed acyclic graph G is defined as cc(G) = min_P ∑_i |P_i|, where the minimum is taken over all legal (parallel) black pebblings of G and |P_i| denotes the number of pebbles on the graph during round i. Intuitively, cc(G) captures the amortized Space-Time complexity of pebbling m copies of G in parallel. The cumulative pebbling complexity of a graph G is of particular interest in the field of cryptography as cc(G) is tightly related to the amortized Area-Time complexity of the Data-Independent Memory-Hard Function (iMHF) f_{G,H} [Joël Alwen and Vladimir Serbinenko, 2015] definedmore »using a constant indegree directed acyclic graph (DAG) G and a random oracle H(⋅). A secure iMHF should have amortized Space-Time complexity as high as possible, e.g., to deter brute-force password attacker who wants to find x such that f_{G,H}(x) = h. Thus, to analyze the (in)security of a candidate iMHF f_{G,H}, it is crucial to estimate the value cc(G) but currently, upper and lower bounds for leading iMHF candidates differ by several orders of magnitude. Blocki and Zhou recently showed that it is NP-Hard to compute cc(G), but their techniques do not even rule out an efficient (1+ε)-approximation algorithm for any constant ε>0. We show that for any constant c > 0, it is Unique Games hard to approximate cc(G) to within a factor of c. Along the way, we show the hardness of approximation of the DAG Vertex Deletion problem on DAGs of constant indegree. Namely, we show that for any k,ε >0 and given a DAG G with N nodes and constant indegree, it is Unique Games hard to distinguish between the case that G is (e_1, d_1)-reducible with e_1=N^{1/(1+2 ε)}/k and d_1=k N^{2 ε/(1+2 ε)}, and the case that G is (e_2, d_2)-depth-robust with e_2 = (1-ε)k e_1 and d_2= 0.9 N^{(1+ε)/(1+2 ε)}, which may be of independent interest. Our result generalizes a result of Svensson who proved an analogous result for DAGs with indegree 𝒪(N).« less
4. Polynomial-time algorithm for Maximum Independent Set in bounded-degree graphs with no long induced claws

   Chudnovsky, M. with ( January 2022 , 2022 Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA))

   For graphs G and H, we say that G is H-free if it does not contain H as an induced subgraph. Already in the early 1980s Alekseev observed that if H is connected, then the Max Weight Independent Set problem (MWIS) remains NP-hard in H-free graphs, unless H is a path or a subdivided claw, i.e., a graph obtained from the three-leaf star by subdividing each edge some number of times (possibly zero). Since then determining the complexity of MWIS in these remaining cases is one of the most important problems in algorithmic graph theory. A general belief is thatmore »the problem is polynomial-time solvable, which is witnessed by algorithmic results for graphs excluding some small paths or subdivided claws. A more conclusive evidence was given by the recent breakthrough result by Gartland and Lokshtanov [FOCS 2020]: They proved that MWIS can be solved in quasipolynomial time in H-free graphs, where H is any fixed path. If H is an arbitrary subdivided claw, we know much less: The problem admits a QPTAS and a subexponential-time algorithm [Chudnovsky et al., SODA 2019]. In this paper we make an important step towards solving the problem by showing that for any subdivided claw H, MWIS is polynomial-time solvable in H-free graphs of bounded degree.« less
5. Complexity of Ck-Coloring in Hereditary Classes of Graphs

   Chudnovsky, M. ; Huang, S. ; Rzazewski, P. ; Spirkl, S. ; and Zhong, M. ( September 2019 , European Symposium on Algorithms)

   For a graph F, a graph G is F-free if it does not contain an induced subgraph isomorphic to F. For two graphs G and H, an H-coloring of G is a mapping f : V (G) → V (H) such that for every edge uv ∈ E(G) it holds that f(u)f(v) ∈ E(H). We are interested in the complexity of the problem H-Coloring, which asks for the existence of an H-coloring of an input graph G. In particular, we consider H-Coloring of F-free graphs, where F is a fixed graph and H is an odd cycle of length atmore »least 5. This problem is closely related to the well known open problem of determining the complexity of 3-Coloring of Pt-free graphs. We show that for every odd k ≥ 5 the Ck-Coloring problem, even in the precoloring-extension variant, can be solved in polynomial time in P9-free graphs. On the other hand, we prove that the extension version of Ck-Coloring is NP-complete for F-free graphs whenever some component of F is not a subgraph of a subdivided claw.« less