Corelab Seminar
2015-2016

Valia Mitsou
Complexity and Approximability for Parameterized CSP

Abstract.
The complexity of various Constraint Satisfaction Problems (CSP) when parameterized by structural measures (such as treewidth or clique-width) is a well-investigated area. In this talk, we take a fresh look at such questions from the point of view of approximation, considering four standard CSP predicates: AND, OR, PARITY, and MAJORITY. By providing new or tighter hardness results for the satisfiability versions, as well as approximation algorithms for the corresponding maximization problems, we show that already these basic predicates display a diverse set of behaviors, ranging from being FPT to optimize exactly for quite general parameters (PARITY), to being W-hard but well-approximable (OR, MAJORITY) to being W-hard and inapproximable (AND). Our results indicate the interest in posing the question of approximability during the usual investigation of CSP complexity with regards to the landscape of structural parameters.

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