We study the coloring problem: Given a graph G, decide whether $c(G) \leq q$ or $c(G) \ge Q$, where c(G) is the chromatic number of G. We derive conditional hardness for this problem for any constant $3 \le q < Q$. For $q\ge 4$, our result is based on Khot's 2-to-1 conjecture [Khot'02]. For $q=3$, we base our hardness result on a certain `fish shaped' variant of his conjecture.
We also prove that the problem almost coloring is hard for any constant $\eps>0$, assuming Khot's Unique Games conjecture. This is the problem of deciding for a given graph, between the case where one can 3-color all but a $\eps$ fraction of the vertices without monochromatic edges, and the case where the graph contains no independent set of relative size at least $\eps$.
Our result is based on bounding various generalized noise-stability quantities using the invariance principle of Mossel et al [MOO'05].
The generalized coloring numbers of Kierstead and Yang (Order 2003) offer an algorithmically-useful characterization of graph classes with bounded expansion. In this work, we consider the hardness and approximability of these parameters. First, we complete the work of Grohe et al. (WG 2015) by showing that computing the weak 2-coloring number is NP-hard. Our approach further establishes that determining if a graph has weak $r$-coloring number at most $k$ is para-NP-hard when parameterized by $k$ for all $r \geq 2$. We adapt this to determining if a graph has $r$-coloring number at most $k$ as …
Very recently, a long-standing open question proposed by Bodlaender in 1991 was answered: the graph coloring game is PSPACE-complete. In 2019, Andres and Lock proposed five variants of the graph coloring game and left open the question of PSPACE-hardness related to them. In this paper, we prove that these variants are PSPACE-complete for the graph coloring game and also for the greedy coloring game, even if the number of colors is the chromatic number. Finally, we also prove that a connected version of the graph coloring game, proposed by Charpentier et al. in 2019, is PSPACE-complete.
A graph is weakly $2$-colored if the nodes are labeled with colors black and white such that each black node is adjacent to at least one white node and vice versa. In this work we study the distributed computational complexity of weak $2$-coloring in the standard LOCAL model of distributed computing, and how it is related to the distributed computational complexity of other graph problems. First, we show that weak $2$-coloring is a minimal distributed symmetry-breaking problem for regular even-degree trees and high-girth graphs: if there is any non-trivial locally checkable labeling problem th…
We study the computational complexity of two related problems: recovering a planted $q$-coloring in $G(n,1/2)$, and finding efficiently verifiable witnesses of non-$q$-colorability (a.k.a. refutations) in $G(n,1/2)$. Our main results show hardness for both these problems in a restricted-but-powerful class of algorithms based on computing low-degree polynomials in the inputs. The problem of recovering a planted $q$-coloring is equivalent to recovering $q$ disjoint planted cliques that cover all the vertices -- a potentially easier variant of the well-studied planted clique problem. Our first re…
Let $G$ be a nontrivial connected, edge-colored graph. An edge-cut $S$ of $G$ is called a rainbow cut if no two edges in $S$ are colored with a same color. An edge-coloring of $G$ is a rainbow disconnection coloring if for every two distinct vertices $s$ and $t$ of $G$, there exists a rainbow cut $S$ in $G$ such that $s$ and $t$ belong to different components of $G\setminus S$. For a connected graph $G$, the {\it rainbow disconnection number} of $G$, denoted by $rd(G)$, is defined as the smallest number of colors such that $G$ has a rainbow disconnection coloring by using this number of colors…
In this paper, we showcase the class XNLP as a natural place for many hard problems parameterized by linear width measures. This strengthens existing $W[1]$-hardness proofs for these problems, since XNLP-hardness implies $W[t]$-hardness for all $t$. It also indicates, via a conjecture by Pilipczuk and Wrochna [ToCT 2018], that any XP algorithm for such problems is likely to require XP space. In particular, we show XNLP-completeness for natural problems parameterized by pathwidth, linear clique-width, and linear mim-width. The problems we consider are Independent Set, Dominating Set, Odd Cycle …
The noise stability of a Euclidean set $A$ with correlation $ρ$ is the probability that $(X,Y)\in A\times A$, where $X,Y$ are standard Gaussian random vectors with correlation $ρ\in(0,1)$. It is well-known that a Euclidean set of fixed Gaussian volume that maximizes noise stability must be a half space. For a partition of Euclidean space into $m>2$ parts each of Gaussian measure $1/m$, it is still unknown what sets maximize the sum of their noise stabilities. In this work, we classify partitions maximizing noise stability that are also critical points for the derivative of noise stability with…
We show conditional hardness of Approximate Nearest Neighbor Search (ANN) under the $\ell_\infty$ norm with two simple reductions. Our first reduction shows that hardness of a special case of the Shortest Vector Problem (SVP), which captures many provably hard instances of SVP, implies a lower bound for ANN with polynomial preprocessing time under the same norm. Combined with a recent quantitative hardness result on SVP under $\ell_\infty$ (Bennett et al., FOCS 2017), our reduction implies that finding a $(1+\varepsilon)$-approximate nearest neighbor under $\ell_\infty$ with polynomial preproc…
The Earth Mover Distance (EMD) between two sets of points $A, B \subseteq \mathbb{R}^d$ with $|A| = |B|$ is the minimum total Euclidean distance of any perfect matching between $A$ and $B$. One of its generalizations is asymmetric EMD, which is the minimum total Euclidean distance of any matching of size $|A|$ between sets of points $A,B \subseteq \mathbb{R}^d$ with $|A| \leq |B|$. The problems of computing EMD and asymmetric EMD are well-studied and have many applications in computer science, some of which also ask for the EMD-optimal matching itself. Unfortunately, all known algorithms requi…
Graph coloring is one of the most famous computational problems with applications in a wide range of areas such as planning and scheduling, resource allocation, and pattern matching. So far coloring problems are mostly studied on static graphs, which often stand in stark contrast to practice where data is inherently dynamic and subject to discrete changes over time. A temporal graph is a graph whose edges are assigned a set of integer time labels, indicating at which discrete time steps the edge is active. In this paper we present a natural temporal extension of the classical graph coloring pr…
The Hardness of the Functional Orientation 2-Color Problem
我们考虑功能取向2色问题，其由Valiant在他关于全息算法的开创性论文[SIAM J. Comput.，37（5），2008]。Valiant对最大度为3的平面图给出了一个多项式时间的全息算法，并证明了该问题对最大度为10的平面图是NP-完全的. Corrêa等人关于缺陷图着色的一个最新结果。J. Combin.，43，2009]意味着这个问题对于最大度为8的平面图已经很难了。总之，这些结果留下了开放的硬度问题的最大程度之间的4和7的图。我们关闭这一差距表明，答案总是是任意图的最大程度5，这个问题是NP-完全的平面图的最大程度6。此外，对于最大度为5的图，我们注意到存在一个寻找解的线性时间算法。
The first-fit coloring is a heuristic that assigns to each vertex, arriving in a specified order $σ$, the smallest available color. The problem Grundy Coloring asks how many colors are needed for the most adversarial vertex ordering $σ$, i.e., the maximum number of colors that the first-fit coloring requires over all possible vertex orderings. Since its inception by Grundy in 1939, Grundy Coloring has been examined for its structural and algorithmic aspects. A brute-force $f(k)n^{2^{k-1}}$-time algorithm for Grundy Coloring on general graphs is not difficult to obtain, where $k$ is the number …
The Strong Exponential Time Hypothesis (SETH) asserts that for every $\varepsilon>0$ there exists $k$ such that $k$-SAT requires time $(2-\varepsilon)^n$. The field of fine-grained complexity has leveraged SETH to prove quite tight conditional lower bounds for dozens of problems in various domains and complexity classes, including Edit Distance, Graph Diameter, Hitting Set, Independent Set, and Orthogonal Vectors. Yet, it has been repeatedly asked in the literature whether SETH-hardness results can be proven for other fundamental problems such as Hamiltonian Path, Independent Set, Chromatic Nu…
The Artificial Hormone System (AHS) is a self-organizing middleware to allocate tasks in a distributed system. We extended it by so-called negator hormones to enable conditional task structures. However, this extension increases the computational complexity of seemingly simple decision problems in the system: In [1] and [2], we defined the problems Negator-Path and Negator-Sat and proved their NP-completeness. In this supplementary report to these papers, we show examples of Negator-Path and Negator-Sat, introduce the novel problem Negator-Stability and explain why all of these problems involv…
The Parameterized Complexity of Vertex-Coloring Edge-Weighting
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Hyderabad（印度理工学院海德拉巴分校计算机科学与工程系）；School of Computer Science, University of Leads（利兹大学计算机学院）；Chennai Mathematical Institute（金奈数学研究所）
We study the problem of efficiently refuting the k-colorability of a graph, or equivalently certifying a lower bound on its chromatic number. We give formal evidence of average-case computational hardness for this problem in sparse random regular graphs, showing optimality of a simple spectral certificate. This evidence takes the form of a computationally-quiet planting: we construct a distribution of d-regular graphs that has significantly smaller chromatic number than a typical regular graph drawn uniformly at random, while providing evidence that these two distributions are indistinguishabl…
We provide new (parameterized) computational hardness results for Interval Scheduling on Unrelated Machines. It is a classical scheduling problem motivated from just-in-time or lean manufacturing, where the goal is to complete jobs exactly at their deadline. We are given $n$ jobs and $m$ machines. Each job has a deadline, a weight, and a processing time that may be different on each machine. The goal is find a schedule that maximized the total weight of jobs completed exactly at their deadline. Note that this uniquely defines a processing time interval for each job on each machine. Interval Sc…
