Teaching Algorithm Design: A Literature Review

Potential Research Topics

Dynamic Vertex Connectivity

For very small connectivity (subpolynomial)

Fully Dynamic s-t Edge Connectivity in Subpolynomial Time

Deterministic Small Vertex Connectivity in Almost Linear Time

For larger connectivity that requires reduction to max-flow

Dynamic Maxflow via Dynamic Interior Point Methods

TSP

Faster Approximations for Metric-TSP via Linear Programming, reduction from fraction to approximate

Talk by Omri Weinstein

A Nearly Time-Optimal Distributed Approximation of Minimum Cost k-Edge-Connected Spanning Subgraph

Approximating the Held-Karp Bound for Metric TSP in Nearly Linear Time

Sorrachai Simpler Packing Covering MwU Note

Maroid Intersection

Faster Matroid Intersection

Congest Lower Bound Using Rounds vs. Bits Complexity

Future Goals

  • Check whether recent breakthrough for max flow imply congest lower bound or not.

Polynomial Pass Lower Bounds for Graph Streaming Algorithms. [Assadi, Chen, Khanna, STOC'19]

Large Vertex Connectivity

Two party communication is tight.

Streaming: I guess the reduction to BMM is tight, so we should wait for the BMM to be tight in streaming.

CONGEST: I guess the reduction is not tight, current running time is $n^{2/3}T_{BMM}^{1/3}$.

Quantum query: not tight, current upper bound is $n^{11/6}$ while lower bound is $n^{1.5}$. I suspect the lower bound should be higher.

Vertex Connectivity in Poly-logarithmic Max-Flows [Li, Nanongkai, Panigrahi, Saranurak, Yingchareonthawornchai, STOC'21]

Nearly Optimal Communication and Query Complexity of Bipartite Matching. [Blikstad, vdBrand, Efron, Mukhopadhyay, Nanongkai, FOCS'22]

Congest small Edge/Vertex Connectivity

Future Goals

  • Explore the complexity of computing small undirected unweighted Edge/Vertex connectivity in congest model. I guess the complexity should be $\Theta(kD)$.

Distributed Connectivity Decomposition [Censor-Hillel, Ghaffari, Kuhn, PODC'15]

Near-Optimal Distributed Computation of Small Vertex Cuts [Parter, Petruschka, DISC'22]

Small Cuts and Connectivity Certificates: A Fault Tolerant Approach [Parter,DISC'19]

Sequential local vertex cut / directed edge cut

The current best upper bound is $O(\mu k^2)$ and lower bound is $\Omega(\mu k)$.

Computing and Testing Small Connectivity in Near-Linear Time and Queries via Fast Local Cut Algorithms.

Distributed/Parallel Negative Weighted SSSP

Future Goals

  • The current reduction has a $n^{o(1)}$ factor, we want to reduce it to $polylog(n)$.

Negative-Weight Single-Source Shortest Paths in Near-linear Time [Bernstein, Nanongkai, Wulff-Nilsen FOCS'22]

Triangle Detection in CONGEST (Clique) Model

breaking the $O(n^{1/3})$ upper bound in congest model (or even congest clique, but not allowed to use fast matrix multiplication).

Strong sublinear time algorithm in CONGEST model

Elkin’s paper gives a truly sublinear round algorithm for shortest path in congest model.

For bipartite matching, the O(nlog n) round algorithm is not for weighted graph.

The $O(n)$ commmunication protocol for BMM cite requires $O(log W)$.

General question: consider “strong running time” in distributed, parallel or other models.

Strong polynomial time negative weight shortest path via max-flow

There was a reduction to max-flow which lose a $O(m)$ factor, the open problem is to improve that reduction.

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/bf02579200.pdf

https://www.jstor.org/stable/170819

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3383454

lower bounds for dynamic query model

prove lower bound for the paper Fast Algorithms via Dynamic-Oracle Matroids

Hard Problems

Streaming Space vs. Passes Lower Bound for Reachability

Future Goals

  • Ultimate goal: $n^{\epsilon}$ passes is nessesary for $n^{1+\epsilon}$ space.

Almost Optimal Super-Constant-Pass Streaming Lower Bounds for Reachability [Chen, Kol, Paramonov, Saxena, Song, Yu, STOC'21]

Near-Quadratic Lower Bounds for Two-Pass Graph Streaming Algorithms [Assadi, Raz, FOCS'20]

Superlinear lower bounds for multipass graph processing [Guruswami, Onak, CCC'13]

Directed Edge Connectivity

Minimum Cuts in Directed Graphs via Partial Sparsification [Chen, Li, Nanongkai, Panigrahi, Quantud, Saranurak, FOCS'21]

Faster Algorithms for Rooted Connectivity in Directed Graphs[Chekuri, Quanrud, ICALP'21]

Submodular Function Minimization

Improved Lower Bounds for Submodular Function Minimization [Chakrabarty, Graur, Jiang, Sidford, FOCS'22]

New Query Lower Bounds for Submodular Function MInimization [Graur, Pollner, Ramaswamy, Weinberg, ITCS'20]

Minimizing Convex Functions with Integral Minimizers [Jiang, SODA'21]