Random CNFs are Hard for Cutting Planes

Contiguous Cake Cutting: Hardness Results and Approximation Algorithms

We study the fair allocation of a cake, which serves as a metaphor for a divisible resource, under the requirement that each agent should receive a contiguous piece of the cake. While it is known that no finite envy-free algorithm exists in this setting, we exhibit efficient algorithms that produce allocations with low envy among the agents. We then establish NP-hardness results for various decision problems on the existence of envy-free allocations, such as when we fix the ordering of the agents or constrain the positions of certain cuts. In addition, we consider a discretized setting where i…

Cutting a tree with Subgraph Complementation is hard, except for some small trees

For a graph property $Π$, Subgraph Complementation to $Π$ is the problem to find whether there is a subset $S$ of vertices of the input graph $G$ such that modifying $G$ by complementing the subgraph induced by $S$ results in a graph satisfying the property $Π$. We prove that the problem of Subgraph Complementation to $T$-free graphs is NP-Complete, for $T$ being a tree, except for 41 trees of at most 13 vertices (a graph is $T$-free if it does not contain any induced copies of $T$). This result, along with the 4 known polynomial-time solvable cases (when $T$ is a path on at most 4 vertices), …

Planning over Chain Causal Graphs for Variables with Domains of Size 5 Is NP-Hard

Recently, considerable focus has been given to the problem of determining the boundary between tractable and intractable planning problems. In this paper, we study the complexity of planning in the class C_n of planning problems, characterized by unary operators and directed path causal graphs. Although this is one of the simplest forms of causal graphs a planning problem can have, we show that planning is intractable for C_n (unless P = NP), even if the domains of state variables have bounded size. In particular, we show that plan existence for C_n^k is NP-hard for k>=5 by reduction from CNFS…

Phase Transitions of Traveling Salesperson Problems solved with Linear Programming and Cutting Planes

The Traveling Salesperson problem asks for the shortest cyclic tour visiting a set of cities given their pairwise distances and belongs to the NP-hard complexity class, which means that with all known algorithms in the worst case instances are not solveable in polynomial time, i.e., the problem is hard. Though that does not mean, that there are not subsets of the problem which are easy to solve. To examine numerically transitions from an easy to a hard phase, a random ensemble of cities in the Euclidean plane given a parameter σ, which governs the hardness, is introduced. Here, a linear progra…

Cutting Barnette graphs perfectly is hard

A perfect matching cut is a perfect matching that is also a cutset, or equivalently a perfect matching containing an even number of edges on every cycle. The corresponding algorithmic problem, Perfect Matching Cut, is known to be NP-complete in subcubic bipartite graphs [Le & Telle, TCS '22] but its complexity was open in planar graphs and in cubic graphs. We settle both questions at once by showing that Perfect Matching Cut is NP-complete in 3-connected cubic bipartite planar graphs or Barnette graphs. Prior to our work, among problems whose input is solely an undirected graph, only Distance-…

On the Power and Limitations of Branch and Cut

The Stabbing Planes proof system was introduced to model the reasoning carried out in practical mixed integer programming solvers. As a proof system, it is powerful enough to simulate Cutting Planes and to refute the Tseitin formulas -- certain unsatisfiable systems of linear equations mod 2 -- which are canonical hard examples for many algebraic proof systems. In a recent (and surprising) result, Dadush and Tiwari showed that these short refutations of the Tseitin formulas could be translated into quasi-polynomial size and depth Cutting Planes proofs, refuting a long-standing conjecture. This…

Phase transition for cutting-plane approach to vertex-cover problem

We study the vertex-cover problem which is an NP-hard optimization problem and a prototypical model exhibiting phase transitions on random graphs, e.g., Erdoes-Renyi (ER) random graphs. These phase transitions coincide with changes of the solution space structure, e.g, for the ER ensemble at connectivity c=e=2.7183 from replica symmetric to replica-symmetry broken. For the vertex-cover problem, also the typical complexity of exact branch-and-bound algorithms, which proceed by exploring the landscape of feasible configurations, change close to this phase transition from "easy" to "hard". In thi…

近似 Sperner 问题的困难性及其在无嫉妒蛋糕切割中的应用

Hardness of Approximate Sperner and Applications to Envy-Free Cake Cutting

本文证明在任意常数维度下寻找仅含三种颜色的单纯形仍是 PPAD-完全的，并将此结论应用于无嫉妒蛋糕切割问题，证明寻找使三个智能体无嫉妒的分配也是 PPAD-完全的。

Almost Tight Lower Bounds for Hard Cutting Problems in Embedded Graphs

We prove essentially tight lower bounds, conditionally to the Exponential Time Hypothesis, for two fundamental but seemingly very different cutting problems on surface-embedded graphs: the Shortest Cut Graph problem and the Multiway Cut problem. A cut graph of a graph $G$ embedded on a surface $S$ is a subgraph of $G$ whose removal from $S$ leaves a disk. We consider the problem of deciding whether an unweighted graph embedded on a surface of genus $g$ has a cut graph of length at most a given value. We prove a time lower bound for this problem of $n^{Ω(g/\log g)}$ conditionally to ETH. In oth…

无嫉妒图切割的复杂性

The Complexity of Envy-Free Graph Cutting

该研究聚焦异质可分资源对应连通图边、需分配连通块且满足无嫉妒公平性的划分问题，分析其关于智能体数量和边数的复杂性，给出常智能体数下的复杂性二分法及常边数下的多项式时间算法。