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Title: Higher-Order Cheeger Inequality for Partitioning with Buffers
We prove a new generalization of the higher-order Cheeger inequality for partitioning with buffers. Consider a graph G=(V,E). The buffered expansion of a set S⊆V with a buffer B⊆V∖S is the edge expansion of S after removing all the edges from set S to its buffer B. An ε-buffered k-partitioning is a partitioning of a graph into disjoint components Pi and buffers Bi, in which the size of buffer Bi for Pi is small relative to the size of Pi: |Bi|≤ε|Pi|. The buffered expansion of a buffered partition is the maximum of buffered expansions of the k sets Pi with buffers Bi. Let hk,εG be the buffered expansion of the optimal ε-buffered k-partitioning, then for every δ>0, hk,εG≤Oδ(1)⋅(logkε)⋅λ⌊(1+δ)k⌋, where λ⌊(1+δ)k⌋ is the ⌊(1+δ)k⌋-th smallest eigenvalue of the normalized Laplacian of G. Our inequality is constructive and avoids the ``square-root loss'' that is present in the standard Cheeger inequalities (even for k=2). We also provide a complementary lower bound, and a novel generalization to the setting with arbitrary vertex weights and edge costs. Moreover our result implies and generalizes the standard higher-order Cheeger inequalities and another recent Cheeger-type inequality by Kwok, Lau, and Lee (2017) involving robust vertex expansion.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1955351
NSF-PAR ID:
10519134
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ;
Publisher / Repository:
SODA 2024
Date Published:
ISSN:
978-1-61197-791-2
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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