We prove the existence conjecture for combinatorial designs, answering a question of Steiner from 1853. More generally, we show that the natural divisibility conditions are sufficient for clique decompositions of simplicial complexes that satisfy a certain pseudorandomness condition. As a further generalisation, we obtain the same conclusion only assuming an extendability property and the existence of a robust fractional clique decomposition.
As a weaker version of the Existence Conjecture, Erd o s and Hanani @cite_6 posed the question of the existence of asymptotically optimal Steiner systems; equivalently, finding @math edge-disjoint @math 's in @math . This was proved by R "odl @cite_3 , by developing a new semi-random construction method known as the nibble', which has since had a great impact on Combinatorics (see e.g. @cite_15 @cite_1 @cite_10 @cite_12 @cite_46 @cite_19 @cite_33 @cite_25 @cite_28 for related results and improved bounds). It will also play an important role in this paper.
@cite_33 @cite_46 @cite_28 @cite_1 @cite_3 @cite_6 @cite_19 @cite_15 @cite_10 @cite_25 @cite_12
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A partial Steiner system Sp(t, k, n) is a collection of k-subsets (i.e. subsets of size k) of n element set such that every t-subset is contained in at most one k-subset. To avoid trivial cases, we assume 2 ⩾ t < k < n. It is easy to see that the size of a partial Steiner system Sp(t, k, n) is at most (tn) (kt). Confirming a conjecture of Erdos and Hanani [5], Rodl [19] proved that for fixed positive integers t and k, there is a partial Steiner system Sp(t, k, n) of size at least (1 − o(1)) ( nt)( kt) where o(1) goes to 0 as n goes to infinity. Grable [7] found an explicit bound of the o(1) term above and it was improved by Kostochka and Rodl [15] to n−1 ((kt)+o(1)−1). All proofs used Rodl's nibble method. We also use the method to improve the bound to O(( log nn) k − t(( kt)−1) for 2 ⩾ t < k — 2. (For t = k — 1, slightly better bounds were already known. See [2].) We believe that the nibble method gives no better bound up to a logarithmic factor. Recently, in [Random Struct Algorithm 41 2012, 441-450] we adapted exploration and martingale arguments of Nachmias and Peres [ALEA Lat Am J Probab Math Stat 3 2007, 133-142], in turn based on ideas of Martin-Lof [J Appl Probab 23 1986, 265-282], Karp [Random Struct Alg 1 1990, 73-93] and Aldous [Ann Probab 25 1997, 812-854], to prove asymptotic normality of the number L1 of vertices in the largest component L1 of the random r-uniform hypergraph in the supercritical regime. In this paper we take these arguments further to prove two new results: strong tail bounds on the distribution of L1, and joint asymptotic normality of L1 and the number M1 of edges of L1 in the sparsely supercritical case. These results are used in [Combin Probab Comput 25 2016, 21-75], where we enumerate sparsely connected hypergraphs asymptotically. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Random Struct. Alg., 50, 325-352, 2017 We initiate the probabilistic analysis of linear programming (LP) decoding of low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes. Specifically, we show that for a random LDPC code ensemble, the linear programming decoder of Feldman succeeds in correcting a constant fraction of errors with high probability. The fraction of correctable errors guaranteed by our analysis surpasses previous nonasymptotic results for LDPC codes, and in particular, exceeds the best previous finite-length result on LP decoding by a factor greater than ten. This improvement stems in part from our analysis of probabilistic bit-flipping channels, as opposed to adversarial channels. At the core of our analysis is a novel combinatorial characterization of LP decoding success, based on the notion of a flow on the Tanner graph of the code. An interesting by-product of our analysis is to establish the existence of ldquoprobabilistic expansionrdquo in random bipartite graphs, in which one requires only that almost every (as opposed to every) set of a certain size expands, for sets much larger than in the classical worst case setting. We prove tight upper bounds on the logarithmic derivative of the independence and matching polynomials of d-regular graphs. For independent sets, this theorem is a strengthening of Kahn's result that a disjoint union of copies of Kd;d maximizes the number of independent sets of a bipartite d-regular graph, Galvin and Tet ali's result that the independence polynomial is maximized by the same, and Zhao's extension of both results to all d-regular graphs. For matchings, this shows that the matching polynomial and the total number of matchings of a d-regular graph are maximized by a union of copies of Kd;d. Using this we prove the asymptotic upper matching conjecture of Friedland, Krop, Lundow, and Markstrom. In probabilistic language, our main theorems state that for all d-regular graphs and all �, the occupancy fraction of the hard-core model and the edge occupancy fraction of the monomer-dimer model with fugacity � are maximized by Kd;d. Our method involves constrained optimization problems over distributions of random variables and applies to all d-regular graphs directly, without a reduction to the bipartite case. Using a variant of the method we prove a lower bound on the occupancy fraction of the hard-core model on any d-regular, vertex-transitive, bipartite graph: the occupancy fraction of such a graph is strictly greater than the occupancy fraction of the unique translationinvariant hard-core measure on the infinite d-regular tree Abstract We show that if a collection of hypergraphs (1) is uniform (every edge contains exactly k vertices, for some fixed k), (2) has minimum degree asymptotic to the maximum degree, and (3) has maximum codegree (the number of edges containing a pair of vertices) asymptotically negligible compared with the maximum degree, then the chromatic index is asymptotic to the maximum degree. This means that the edges can be partitioned into packings (or matchings), almost all of which are almost perfect. We also show that the edges can be partitioned into coverings, almost all of which are almost perfect. The result strengthens and generalizes a result due to Frankl and Rodl concerning the existence of a single almost perfect packing or covering under similar circumstances. In particular, it shows that the chromatic index of a Steiner triple-system on n points is asymptotic to n 2 , resolving a long-standing conjecture. Given an arc-weighted directed graph G = (V, A, spl lscr ) and a pair of nodes s, t, we seek to find an s-t walk of length at most B that maximizes some given function f of the set of nodes visited by the walk. The simplest case is when we seek to maximize the number of nodes visited: this is called the orienteering problem. Our main result is a quasi-polynomial time algorithm that yields an O(log OPT) approximation for this problem when f is a given submodular set function. We then extend it to the case when a node v is counted as visited only if the walk reaches v in its time window [R(v), D(v)]. We apply the algorithm to obtain several new results. First, we obtain an O(log OPT) approximation for a generalization of the orienteering problem in which the profit for visiting each node may vary arbitrarily with time. This captures the time window problem considered earlier for which, even in undirected graphs, the best approximation ratio known [Bansal, (2004)] is O(log sup 2 OPT). The second application is an O(log sup 2 k) approximation for the k-TSP problem in directed graphs (satisfying asymmetric triangle inequality). This is the first non-trivial approximation algorithm for this problem. The third application is an O(log sup 2 k) approximation (in quasi-poly time) for the group Steiner problem in undirected graphs where k is the number of groups. This improves earlier ratios (Garg, ) by a logarithmic factor and almost matches the inapproximability threshold on trees (Halperin and Krauthgamer, 2003). This connection to group Steiner trees also enables us to prove that the problem we consider is hard to approximate to a ratio better than spl Omega (log sup 1- spl epsi OPT), even in undirected graphs. Even though our algorithm runs in quasi-poly time, we believe that the implications for the approximability of several basic optimization problems are interesting. Let n, k, and t be integers satisfying . A Steiner system with parameters t, k, and n is a k-uniform hypergraph on n vertices in which every set of t distinct vertices is contained in exactly one edge. An outstanding problem in Design Theory is to determine whether a nontrivial Steiner system exists for . In this note we prove that for every and sufficiently large n, there exists an almost Steiner system with parameters t, k, and n; that is, there exists a k-uniform hypergraph on n vertices such that every set of t distinct vertices is covered by either one or two edges. The binary symmetric stochastic block model deals with a random graph of @math vertices partitioned into two equal-sized clusters, such that each pair of vertices is connected independently with probability @math within clusters and @math across clusters. In the asymptotic regime of @math and @math for fixed @math and @math , we show that the semidefinite programming relaxation of the maximum likelihood estimator achieves the optimal threshold for exactly recovering the partition from the graph with probability tending to one, resolving a conjecture of Abbe14 . Furthermore, we show that the semidefinite programming relaxation also achieves the optimal recovery threshold in the planted dense subgraph model containing a single cluster of size proportional to @math . The Steiner packing problem is to find the maximum number of edge-disjoint subgraphs of a given graph G that connect a given set of required points S. This problem is motivated by practical applications in VLSI- layout and broadcasting, as well as theoretical reasons. In this paper, we study this problem and present an algorithm with an asymptotic approximation factor of vSv 4. This gives a sufficient condition for the existence of k edge-disjoint Steiner trees in a graph in terms of the edge-connectivity of the graph. We will show that this condition is the best possible if the number of terminals is 3. At the end, we consider the fractional version of this problem, and observe that it can be reduced to the minimum Steiner tree problem via the ellipsoid algorithm. Abstract In this paper, we study the Steiner tree problem with minimum number of Steiner points and bounded edge-length (STPMSPBEL), which asks for a tree interconnecting a given set of n terminal points and a minimum number of Steiner points such that the Euclidean length of each edge is no more than a given positive constant. This problem has applications in VLSI design, WDM optimal networks and wireless communications. We prove that this problem is NP-complete and present a polynomial time approximation algorithm whose worst-case performance ratio is 5. We study a noiseless broadcast link serving @math users whose requests arise from a library of @math files. Every user is equipped with a cache of size @math files each. It has been shown that by splitting all the files into packets and placing individual packets in a random independent manner across all the caches prior to any transmission, at most @math file transmissions are required for any set of demands from the library. The achievable delivery scheme involves linearly combining packets of different files following a greedy clique cover solution to the underlying index coding problem. This remarkable multiplicative gain of random placement and coded delivery has been established in the asymptotic regime when the number of packets per file @math scales to infinity. The asymptotic coding gain obtained is roughly @math . In this paper, we initiate the finite-length analysis of random caching schemes when the number of packets @math is a function of the system parameters @math , and @math . Specifically, we show that the existing random placement and clique cover delivery schemes that achieve optimality in the asymptotic regime can have at most a multiplicative gain of 2 even if the number of packets is exponential in the asymptotic gain @math . Furthermore, for any clique cover-based coded delivery and a large class of random placement schemes that include the existing ones, we show that the number of packets required to get a multiplicative gain of @math is at least @math . We design a new random placement and an efficient clique cover-based delivery scheme that achieves this lower bound approximately. We also provide tight concentration results that show that the average (over the random placement involved) number of transmissions concentrates very well requiring only a polynomial number of packets in the rest of the system parameters. [1] conjectured the existence of a sharp threshold on model parameters for community detection in sparse random graphs drawn from the stochastic block model. Mossel, Neeman and Sly [2] established the negative part of the conjecture, proving impossibility of non-trivial reconstruction below the threshold. In this work we solve the positive part of the conjecture. To that end we introduce a modified adjacency matrix B which counts self-avoiding paths of a given length e between pairs of nodes. We then prove that for logarithmic length e, the leading eigenvectors of this modified matrix provide a non-trivial reconstruction of the underlying structure, thereby settling the conjecture. A key step in the proof consists in establishing a weak Ramanujan property of the constructed matrix B. Namely, the spectrum of B consists in two leading eigenvalues ρ(B), λ2 and n -- 2 eigenvalues of a lower order O(ne √ρ(B) for all e 0, ρ(B) denoting B's spectral radius. The well-known @math -disjoint path problem ( @math -DPP) asks for pairwise vertex-disjoint paths between @math specified pairs of vertices @math in a given graph, if they exist. The decision version of the shortest @math -DPP asks for the length of the shortest (in terms of total length) such paths. Similarly the search and counting versions ask for one such and the number of such shortest set of paths, respectively. We restrict attention to the shortest @math -DPP instances on undirected planar graphs where all sources and sinks lie on a single face or on a pair of faces. We provide efficient sequential and parallel algorithms for the search versions of the problem answering one of the main open questions raised by Colin de Verdiere and Schrijver for the general one-face problem. We do so by providing a randomised @math algorithm along with an @math time randomised sequential algorithm. We also obtain deterministic algorithms with similar resource bounds for the counting and search versions. In contrast, previously, only the sequential complexity of decision and search versions of the "well-ordered" case has been studied. For the one-face case, sequential versions of our routines have better running times for constantly many terminals. In addition, the earlier best known sequential algorithms (e.g. ) were randomised while ours are also deterministic. The algorithms are based on a bijection between a shortest @math -tuple of disjoint paths in the given graph and cycle covers in a related digraph. This allows us to non-trivially modify established techniques relating counting cycle covers to the determinant. We further need to do a controlled inclusion-exclusion to produce a polynomial sum of determinants such that all "bad" cycle covers cancel out in the sum allowing us to count "good" cycle covers. This paper takes a significant step towards confirming a long-standing and far-reaching conjecture of Peter J. Cameron and Cheryl E. Praeger. They conjectured in 1993 that there are no non-trivial block-transitive 6-designs. We prove that the Cameron-Praeger conjecture is true for the important case of non-trivial Steiner 6-designs, i.e. for 6-(v,k,@l) designs with @l=1, except possibly when the group is P@CL(2,p^e) with p=2 or 3, and e is an odd prime power. An instance of the k-Steiner forest problem consists of an undirected graph G = (V,E), the edges of which are associated with non-negative costs, and a collection D = (si,ti): 1 ≤ i ≤ d of distinct pairs of vertices, interchangeably referred to as demands. We say that a forest F ⊆ G connects a demand (si, ti) when it contains an si-ti path. Given a requirement parameter K ≤ |D|, the goal is to find a minimum cost forest that connects at least k demands in D. This problem has recently been studied by Hajiaghayi and Jain [SODA'06], whose main contribution in this context was to relate the inapproximability of k-Steiner forest to that of the dense k-subgraph problem. However, Hajiaghayi and Jain did not provide any algorithmic result for the respective settings, and posed this objective as an important direction for future research. In this paper, we present the first non-trivial approximation algorithm for the k-Steiner forest problem, which is based on a novel extension of the Lagrangian relaxation technique. Specifically, our algorithm constructs a feasible forest whose cost is within a factor of O(min n2 3, √d ċ log d) of optimal, where n is the number of vertices in the input graph and d is the number of demands. Given a directed graph @math and a list @math of terminal pairs, the Directed Steiner Network problem asks for a minimum-cost subgraph of @math that contains a directed @math path for every @math . The special case Directed Steiner Tree (when we ask for paths from a root @math to terminals @math ) is known to be fixed-parameter tractable parameterized by the number of terminals, while the special case Strongly Connected Steiner Subgraph (when we ask for a path from every @math to every other @math ) is known to be W[1]-hard. We systematically explore the complexity landscape of directed Steiner problems to fully understand which other special cases are FPT or W[1]-hard. Formally, if @math is a class of directed graphs, then we look at the special case of Directed Steiner Network where the list @math of requests form a directed graph that is a member of @math . Our main result is a complete characterization of the classes @math resulting in fixed-parameter tractable special cases: we show that if every pattern in @math has the combinatorial property of being "transitively equivalent to a bounded-length caterpillar with a bounded number of extra edges," then the problem is FPT, and it is W[1]-hard for every recursively enumerable @math not having this property. This complete dichotomy unifies and generalizes the known results showing that Directed Steiner Tree is FPT [Dreyfus and Wagner, Networks 1971], @math -Root Steiner Tree is FPT for constant @math [Such 'y, WG 2016], Strongly Connected Steiner Subgraph is W[1]-hard [, SIAM J. Discrete Math. 2011], and Directed Steiner Network is solvable in polynomial-time for constant number of terminals [Feldman and Ruhl, SIAM J. Comput. 2006], and moreover reveals a large continent of tractable cases that were not known before. Mulmuley [Mul12a] recently gave an explicit version of Noether’s Normalization lemma for ring of invariants of matrices under simultaneous conjugation, under the conjecture that there are deterministic black-box algorithms for polynomial identity testing (PIT). He argued that this gives evidence that constructing such algorithms for PIT is beyond current techniques. In this work, we show this is not the case. That is, we improve Mulmuley’s reduction and correspondingly weaken the conjecture regarding PIT needed to give explicit Noether Normalization. We then observe that the weaker conjecture has recently been nearly settled by the authors ([FS12]), who gave quasipolynomial size hitting sets for the class of read-once oblivious algebraic branching programs (ROABPs). This gives the desired explicit Noether Normalization unconditionally, up to quasipolynomial factors. As a consequence of our proof we give a deterministic parallel polynomial-time algorithm for deciding if two matrix tuples have intersecting orbit closures, under simultaneous conjugation. We also study the strength of conjectures that Mulmuley requires to obtain similar results as ours. We prove that his conjectures are stronger, in the sense that the computational model he needs PIT algorithms for is equivalent to the well-known algebraic branching program (ABP) model, which is provably stronger than the ROABP model. Finally, we consider the depth-3 diagonal circuit model as defined by Saxena [Sax08], as PIT algorithms for this model also have implications in Mulmuley’s work. Previous work (such as [ASS12] and [FS12]) have given quasipolynomial size hitting sets for this model. In this work, we give a much simpler construction of such hitting sets, using techniques of Shpilka and Volkovich [SV09]. We develop a new multi-scale framework flexible enough to solve a number of problems involving embedding random sequences into random sequences. (Random Str Algorithm 37(1):85–99, 2010) asked whether there exists an increasing (M )-Lipschitz embedding from one i.i.d. Bernoulli sequence into an independent copy with positive probability. We give a positive answer for large enough (M ). A closely related problem is to show that two independent Poisson processes on ( R ) are roughly isometric (or quasi-isometric). Our approach also applies in this case answering a conjecture of Szegedy and of Peled (Ann Appl Probab 20:462–494, 2010). Our theorem also gives a new proof to Winkler’s compatible sequences problem. Our approach does not explicitly depend on the particular geometry of the problems and we believe it will be applicable to a range of multi-scale and random embedding problems. The Lova´sz local lemma due to Erdods and Lova´sz (Infinite and Finite Sets, Colloq. Math. Soc. J. Bolyai 11, 1975, pp. 609-627) is a powerful tool in proving the existence of rare events. We present an extension of this lemma, which works well when the event to be shown to exist is a conjunction of individual events, each of which asserts that a random variable does not deviate much from its mean. As applications, we consider two classes of NP-hard integer programs: minimax and covering integer programs. A key technique, randomized rounding of linear relaxations, was developed by Raghavan and Thompson (Combinatorica, 7 (1987), pp. 365-374) to derive good approximation algorithms for such problems. We use our extension of the local lemma to prove that randomized rounding produces, with nonzero probability, much better feasible solutions than known before, if the constraint matrices of these integer programs are column-sparse (e.g., routing using short paths, problems on hypergraphs with small dimension degree). This complements certain well-known results from discrepancy theory. We also generalize the method of pessimistic estimators due to Raghavan (J. Comput. System Sci., 37 (1988), pp. 130-143), to obtain constructive (algorithmic) versions of our results for covering integer programs. We look at a model of random graphs suggested by Gilbert: given an integer @math and @math , scatter @math vertices independently and uniformly on a metric space, and then add edges connecting pairs of vertices of distance less than @math apart.We consider the asymptotics when the metric space is the interval [0, 1], and @math is a function of @math , for @math . We prove that every upwards closed property of (ordered) graphs has at least a weak threshold in this model on this metric space. (But we do find a metric space on which some upwards closed properties do not even have weak thresholds in this model.) We also prove that every upwards closed property with a threshold much above connectivity's threshold has a strong threshold. (But we also find a sequence of upwards closed properties with lower thresholds that are strictly weak.)