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Information Processing Letters
Volume 89, Issue 5, 16 March 2004, Pages 247-254
 
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doi:10.1016/j.ipl.2003.11.007    How to Cite or Link Using DOI (Opens New Window)
Copyright © 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

On the hardness of approximating label-cover

Irit DinurCorresponding Author Contact Information, E-mail The Corresponding Author and Shmuel SafraE-mail The Corresponding Author

School of Mathematics and Computer Science, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv, Israel

Received 15 December 2002; 
revised 13 November 2003. 
Communicated by L.A. Hemaspaandra 
Available online 14 January 2004.

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Abstract

The Image problem, defined by S. Arora, L. Babai, J. Stern, Z. Sweedyk [Proceedings of 34th IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science, 1993, pp. 724–733], serves as a starting point for numerous hardness of approximation reductions. It is one of six ‘canonical’ approximation problems in the survey of Arora and Lund [Hardness of Approximations, in: Approximation Algorithms for NP-Hard Problems, PWS Publishing Company, 1996, Chapter 10]. In this paper we present a direct combinatorial reduction from low error-probability PCP [Proceedings of 31st ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing, 1999, pp. 29–40] to Image showing it NP-hard to approximate to within 2(logn)1−o(1). This improves upon the best previous hardness of approximation results known for this problem.

We also consider the

(MMSA) problem of finding a satisfying assignment to a monotone formula with the least number of 1's, introduced by M. Alekhnovich, S. Buss, S. Moran, T. Pitassi [Minimum propositional proof length is NP-hard to linearly approximate, 1998]. We define a hierarchy of approximation problems obtained by restricting the number of alternations of the monotone formula. This hierarchy turns out to be equivalent to an AND/OR scheduling hierarchy suggested by M.H. Goldwasser, R. Motwani [Lecture Notes in Comput. Sci., Vol. 1272, Springer-Verlag, 1997, pp. 307–320]. We show some hardness results for certain levels in this hierarchy, and place Image between levels 3 and 4. This partially answers an open problem from M.H. Goldwasser, R. Motwani regarding the precise complexity of each level in the hierarchy, and the place of Image in it.

Author Keywords: Computational complexity; Hardness of approximation; PCP; Label-cover


 
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