More Like this

1. Local algorithms for maximum cut and minimum bisection on locally treelike regular graphs of large degree

   https://doi.org/10.1002/rsa.21149  

   El Alaoui, Ahmed; Montanari, Andrea; Sellke, Mark (May 2023, Random Structures & Algorithms)

   Abstract Given a graph of degree over vertices, we consider the problem of computing a near maximum cut or a near minimum bisection in polynomial time. For graphs of girth , we develop a local message passing algorithm whose complexity is , and that achieves near optimal cut values among all ‐local algorithms. Focusing on max‐cut, the algorithm constructs a cut of value , where is the value of the Parisi formula from spin glass theory, and (subscripts indicate the asymptotic variables). Our result generalizes to locally treelike graphs, that is, graphs whose girth becomes after removing a small fraction of vertices. Earlier work established that, for random ‐regular graphs, the typical max‐cut value is . Therefore our algorithm is nearly optimal on such graphs. An immediate corollary of this result is that random regular graphs have nearly minimum max‐cut, and nearly maximum min‐bisection among all regular locally treelike graphs. This can be viewed as a combinatorial version of the near‐Ramanujan property of random regular graphs. 

   more » « less
2. On the Cut-Query Complexity of Approximating Max-Cut

   https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPICS.ICALP.2024.115  

   Plevrakis, Orestis; Ragavan, Seyoon; Weinberg, S Matthew (January 2024, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik)

   Bringmann, Karl; Grohe, Martin; Puppis, Gabriele; Svensson, Ola (Ed.)

   We consider the problem of query-efficient global max-cut on a weighted undirected graph in the value oracle model examined by [Rubinstein et al., 2018]. Graph algorithms in this cut query model and other query models have recently been studied for various other problems such as min-cut, connectivity, bipartiteness, and triangle detection. Max-cut in the cut query model can also be viewed as a natural special case of submodular function maximization: on query S ⊆ V, the oracle returns the total weight of the cut between S and V\S. Our first main technical result is a lower bound stating that a deterministic algorithm achieving a c-approximation for any c > 1/2 requires Ω(n) queries. This uses an extension of the cut dimension to rule out approximation (prior work of [Graur et al., 2020] introducing the cut dimension only rules out exact solutions). Secondly, we provide a randomized algorithm with Õ(n) queries that finds a c-approximation for any c < 1. We achieve this using a query-efficient sparsifier for undirected weighted graphs (prior work of [Rubinstein et al., 2018] holds only for unweighted graphs). To complement these results, for most constants c ∈ (0,1], we nail down the query complexity of achieving a c-approximation, for both deterministic and randomized algorithms (up to logarithmic factors). Analogously to general submodular function maximization in the same model, we observe a phase transition at c = 1/2: we design a deterministic algorithm for global c-approximate max-cut in O(log n) queries for any c < 1/2, and show that any randomized algorithm requires Ω(n/log n) queries to find a c-approximate max-cut for any c > 1/2. Additionally, we show that any deterministic algorithm requires Ω(n²) queries to find an exact max-cut (enough to learn the entire graph). 

   more » « less
3. A folding preprocess for the max k-cut problem

   https://doi.org/10.1007/s11590-025-02199-0  

   Fakhimi, Ramin; Validi, Hamidreza; Hicks, Illya_V; Terlaky, Tamás; Zuluaga, Luis_F (April 2025, Optimization Letters)

   Abstract Given graph$$G=(V,E)$$ $G=(V,E)$with vertex setVand edge setE, the maxk-cut problem seeks to partition the vertex setVinto at mostksubsets that maximize the weight (number) of edges with endpoints in different parts. This paper proposes a graph folding procedure (i.e., a procedure that reduces the number of the vertices and edges of graphG) for the weighted maxk-cut problem that may help reduce the problem’s dimensionality. While our theoretical results hold for any$$k \ge 2$$ $k\ge 2$, our computational results show the effectiveness of the proposed preprocessonlyfor$$k=2$$ $k=2$and on two sets of instances. Furthermore, we observe that the preprocess improves the performance of a MIP solver on a set of large-scale instances of the max cut problem. 

   more » « less
4. Approximation Algorithm for Norm Multiway Cut

   https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.ESA.2023.32  

   Carlson, Charlie; Jafarov, Jafar; Makarychev, Konstantin; Makarychev, Yury; Shan, Liren (August 2023, Proceedings of the European Symposium on Algorithms)

   Gørtz, Inge Li; Farach-Colton, Martin; Puglisi, Simon J; Herman, Grzegorz (Ed.)

   We consider variants of the classic Multiway Cut problem. Multiway Cut asks to partition a graph G into k parts so as to separate k given terminals. Recently, Chandrasekaran and Wang (ESA 2021) introduced l_p-norm Multiway Cut, a generalization of the problem, in which the goal is to minimize the l_p norm of the edge boundaries of k parts. We provide an O(log^{1/2} n log^{1/2 + 1/p} k) approximation algorithm for this problem, improving upon the approximation guarantee of O(log^{3/2} n log^{1/2} k) due to Chandrasekaran and Wang. We also introduce and study Norm Multiway Cut, a further generalization of Multiway Cut. We assume that we are given access to an oracle, which answers certain queries about the norm. We present an O(log^{1/2} n log^{7/2} k) approximation algorithm with a weaker oracle and an O(log^{1/2} n log^{5/2} k) approximation algorithm with a stronger oracle. Additionally, we show that without any oracle access, there is no n^{1/4-ε} approximation algorithm for every ε > 0 assuming the Hypergraph Dense-vs-Random Conjecture. 

   more » « less
5. Parameterized Complexity of Fair Bisection: (FPT-Approximation meets Unbreakability)

   https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.ESA.2023.63  

   Inamdar, Tanmay; Lokshtanov, Daniel; Saurabh, Saket; Surianarayanan, Vaishali (January 2023, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik)

   Gørtz, Inge Li; Farach-Colton, Martin; Puglisi, Simon J; Herman, Grzegorz (Ed.)

   In the Minimum Bisection problem input is a graph G and the goal is to partition the vertex set into two parts A and B, such that ||A|-|B|| ≤ 1 and the number k of edges between A and B is minimized. The problem is known to be NP-hard, and assuming the Unique Games Conjecture even NP-hard to approximate within a constant factor [Khot and Vishnoi, J.ACM'15]. On the other hand, a 𝒪(log n)-approximation algorithm [Räcke, STOC'08] and a parameterized algorithm [Cygan et al., ACM Transactions on Algorithms'20] running in time k^𝒪(k) n^𝒪(1) is known. The Minimum Bisection problem can be viewed as a clustering problem where edges represent similarity and the task is to partition the vertices into two equally sized clusters while minimizing the number of pairs of similar objects that end up in different clusters. Motivated by a number of egregious examples of unfair bias in AI systems, many fundamental clustering problems have been revisited and re-formulated to incorporate fairness constraints. In this paper we initiate the study of the Minimum Bisection problem with fairness constraints. Here the input is a graph G, positive integers c and k, a function χ:V(G) → {1, …, c} that assigns a color χ(v) to each vertex v in G, and c integers r_1,r_2,⋯,r_c. The goal is to partition the vertex set of G into two almost-equal sized parts A and B with at most k edges between them, such that for each color i ∈ {1, …, c}, A has exactly r_i vertices of color i. Each color class corresponds to a group which we require the partition (A, B) to treat fairly, and the constraints that A has exactly r_i vertices of color i can be used to encode that no group is over- or under-represented in either of the two clusters. We first show that introducing fairness constraints appears to make the Minimum Bisection problem qualitatively harder. Specifically we show that unless FPT=W[1] the problem admits no f(c)n^𝒪(1) time algorithm even when k = 0. On the other hand, our main technical contribution shows that is that this hardness result is simply a consequence of the very strict requirement that each color class i has exactly r_i vertices in A. In particular we give an f(k,c,ε)n^𝒪(1) time algorithm that finds a balanced partition (A, B) with at most k edges between them, such that for each color i ∈ [c], there are at most (1±ε)r_i vertices of color i in A. Our approximation algorithm is best viewed as a proof of concept that the technique introduced by [Lampis, ICALP'18] for obtaining FPT-approximation algorithms for problems of bounded tree-width or clique-width can be efficiently exploited even on graphs of unbounded width. The key insight is that the technique of Lampis is applicable on tree decompositions with unbreakable bags (as introduced in [Cygan et al., SIAM Journal on Computing'14]). An important ingredient of our approximation scheme is a combinatorial result that may be of independent interest, namely that for every k, every graph G admits a tree decomposition with adhesions of size at most 𝒪(k), unbreakable bags, and logarithmic depth. 

   more » « less