skip to main content
10.1145/1007352.1007355acmconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagesstocConference Proceedingsconference-collections
Article

Expander flows, geometric embeddings and graph partitioning

Published: 13 June 2004 Publication History

Abstract

We give a O(√log n)-approximation algorithm for sparsest cut, balanced separator, and graph conductance problems. This improves the O(log n)-approximation of Leighton and Rao (1988). We use a well-known semidefinite relaxation with triangle inequality constraints. Central to our analysis is a geometric theorem about projections of point sets in Rd, whose proof makes essential use of a phenomenon called measure concentration. We also describe an interesting and natural "certificate" for a graph's expansion, by embedding an n-node expander in it with appropriate dilation and congestion. We call this an expander flow.

References

[1]
F. Alizadeh. Interior point methods in semidefinite programming with applications to combinatorial optimization. SIAM J. Optimization, 5:13--51, 1995.
[2]
N. Alon. Eigenvalues and expanders. Combinatorica 6:83--96, 1986.
[3]
N. Alon and V. Milman. λ1, isoperimetric inequalities for graphs and superconcentrators. J. Combin. Theory B 38:73--88, 1985.
[4]
Y. Aumann and Y. Rabani. An O(log k) approximate min-cut max-flow theorem and approximation algorithms. SIAM J. Comp
[5]
K. Ball. An elementary introduction to modern convex geometry, in Flavors of Geometry, S. Levy (ed. ), Cambridge University Press, 1997.
[6]
M. Blum, R. Karp, O. Vornberger, C. Papadimitriou, M. Yannakakis. The complexity of testing whether a graph is a superconcentrator. Inf. Proc. Letters 13:164--167, 1981.
[7]
J. Bourgain. On Lipschitz embeddings of finite metric spaces in Hilbert space. Israel J. Mathematics 52:46--52, 1985.
[8]
J. Cheeger. A lower bound for the smallest eigenvalue of the Laplacian, in Problem in Analysis, 195-199, Princeton Univ. Press, (1970),
[9]
F. Chen, L. Lovasz and I. Pak. Lifting Markov Chains to Speed up Mixing. Proc. ACM STOC, 1999, pp 275--281.
[10]
F. Chung. Spectral graph theory. CBMS Regional Conference Series in Mathematics, 92, American Mathematical Society, 1997.
[11]
L. Danzer and B. Grunbaum. On two problems of P. Erdos and V. L. Klee concerning convex bodies (in German). Math. Zeitschrift 79:95--99, 1962.
[12]
P. Diaconis and L. Saloff-Coste. Comparison theorems for reversible Markov chains. Annals of Applied Probability, 3:696--730, 1993.
[13]
U. Feige and R. Krauthgamer. A polylogarithmic approximation of the minimum bisection. In IEEE FOCS 2001 pp 105--115.
[14]
N. Garg and J. Koneman. Faster and Simpler Algorithms for Multicommodity Flow and other Fractional Packing Problems. In IEEE FOCS 1997.
[15]
N. Garg and V. V. Vazirani and M. Yannakakis. Approximate max-flow min-(multi)cut theorems and their applications. SIAM J. Computing, 25(2):235--251, 1996. Prelim. version in Proc. ACM STOC'93.
[16]
M. X. Goemans. Semidefinite programming in combinatorial optimization. Math. Programming, 79:143--161, 1997.
[17]
M. X. Goemans. unpublished note.
[18]
M. X. Goemans and D. P. Williamson. Improved approximation algorithms for maximum cut and satisfiability problems using semidefinite programming. JACM, 42(6):1115--1145, 1995.
[19]
M. Grotschel, L. Lovasz, and A. Schrijver. Geometric algorithms and combinatorial optimization. Springer-Verlag, 1993.
[20]
H. Karloff and U. Zwick. A 7/8-approximation algorithm for MAX 3SAT? Proc. of 38th IEEE FOCS (1997), 406-415.
[21]
D. Karger, R. Motwani, and M. Sudan. Approximate graph coloring by semidefinite programming. JACM, 45(2):246--265, 1998.
[22]
M. Jerrum and A. Sinclair. Approximating the permanent. SIAM J. Comput., 18(6):1149-1178, 1989.
[23]
T. Leighton and S. Rao. Multicommodity max-flow min-cut theorems and their use in designing approximation algorithms. JACM 46 1999. Prelim. version in ACM STOC 1988.
[24]
N. Linial, E. London, and Y. Rabinovich. The geometry of graphs and some of its algorithmic applications. Combinatorica 15:215--246, 1995.
[25]
L. Lovasz. On the Shannon capacity of a graph. IEEE Trans. on Info. Theory IT-25:1--7, 1979.
[26]
A. Lubotzky, R. Philips, and P. Sarnak. Ramanujan graphs. Combinatorica, 8:261--277, 1988.
[27]
J. Matousek. Lectures on Discrete Geometry. Springer Verlag, 2002.
[28]
Y. Nesterov and A. Nemirovskii. Interior point polynomial methods in convex programming. SIAM, Philadelphia, PA 1994.
[29]
S. Plotkin and D. B. Shmoys and E. Tardos. Fast approximation algorithms for fractional packing and covering problems. Math. Operations Res. 20:257--301, 1995. Prelim. version IEEE Foundations of Computer Science, 1991, 495--504.
[30]
G. Schechtman. Concentration, results and applications. Handbook of the Geometry of Banach Spaces, volume 2, W. B. Johnson and J. Lindenstrauss (eds. ), North Holland, 2003. Draft version available from Schechtman's website.
[31]
F. Shahrokhi and D. W. Matula. The maximum concurrent flow problem. Journal of the ACM, 37:318--334, 1990.
[32]
D. S. Shmoys. Cut problems and their application to divide and conquer. Approximation Algorithms for NP-hard problems, D. S. Hochbaum (ed. ), PWS Publishing, 1995.
[33]
A. Sinclair. Improved bounds for mixing rates of Markov chains and multicommodity flow. Combinatorics, Prob., Comput. 1:351--370, 1992.
[34]
V. Vazirani. Approximation algorithms. Springer Verlag, 2002.
[35]
K. Zatloukal. Personal communication, November 2003.

Cited By

View all
  • (2025)Efficient Partitioning Algorithms for Optimizing Big Graph ComputationComputing and Combinatorics10.1007/978-981-96-1093-8_17(202-213)Online publication date: 20-Feb-2025
  • (2024)A near-linear time approximation algorithm for beyond-worst-case graph clusteringProceedings of the 41st International Conference on Machine Learning10.5555/3692070.3692437(9208-9229)Online publication date: 21-Jul-2024
  • (2023)Optimal Bond Percolation in Networks by a Fast-Decycling FrameworkComplex Networks and Their Applications XI10.1007/978-3-031-21131-7_40(509-519)Online publication date: 26-Jan-2023
  • Show More Cited By

Index Terms

  1. Expander flows, geometric embeddings and graph partitioning

    Recommendations

    Comments

    Information & Contributors

    Information

    Published In

    cover image ACM Conferences
    STOC '04: Proceedings of the thirty-sixth annual ACM symposium on Theory of computing
    June 2004
    660 pages
    ISBN:1581138520
    DOI:10.1145/1007352
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

    Sponsors

    Publisher

    Association for Computing Machinery

    New York, NY, United States

    Publication History

    Published: 13 June 2004

    Permissions

    Request permissions for this article.

    Check for updates

    Qualifiers

    • Article

    Conference

    STOC04
    Sponsor:
    STOC04: Symposium of Theory of Computing 2004
    June 13 - 16, 2004
    IL, Chicago, USA

    Acceptance Rates

    Overall Acceptance Rate 1,469 of 4,586 submissions, 32%

    Contributors

    Other Metrics

    Bibliometrics & Citations

    Bibliometrics

    Article Metrics

    • Downloads (Last 12 months)5
    • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0
    Reflects downloads up to 07 Mar 2025

    Other Metrics

    Citations

    Cited By

    View all
    • (2025)Efficient Partitioning Algorithms for Optimizing Big Graph ComputationComputing and Combinatorics10.1007/978-981-96-1093-8_17(202-213)Online publication date: 20-Feb-2025
    • (2024)A near-linear time approximation algorithm for beyond-worst-case graph clusteringProceedings of the 41st International Conference on Machine Learning10.5555/3692070.3692437(9208-9229)Online publication date: 21-Jul-2024
    • (2023)Optimal Bond Percolation in Networks by a Fast-Decycling FrameworkComplex Networks and Their Applications XI10.1007/978-3-031-21131-7_40(509-519)Online publication date: 26-Jan-2023
    • (2021)Extending MapReduce framework with locality keysProceedings of the 26th ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on Principles and Practice of Parallel Programming10.1145/3437801.3441607(460-462)Online publication date: 17-Feb-2021
    • (2019)A Large-scale Behavioural Analysis of Bots and Humans on TwitterACM Transactions on the Web10.1145/329878913:1(1-23)Online publication date: 5-Feb-2019
    • (2019)Social Networks under StressACM Transactions on the Web10.1145/329546013:1(1-24)Online publication date: 8-Feb-2019
    • (2019)Ensemble Approach for Generalized Network DismantlingComplex Networks and Their Applications VIII10.1007/978-3-030-36687-2_65(783-793)Online publication date: 26-Nov-2019
    • (2018)A comparative study on community detection methods in complex networksJournal of Intelligent & Fuzzy Systems10.3233/JIFS-1768235:1(1077-1086)Online publication date: 27-Jul-2018
    • (2018)Trees for Vertex Cuts, Hypergraph Cuts and Minimum Hypergraph BisectionProceedings of the 30th on Symposium on Parallelism in Algorithms and Architectures10.1145/3210377.3210398(23-32)Online publication date: 11-Jul-2018
    • (2018)On the Integrality Gap of Degree-4 Sum of Squares for Planted CliqueACM Transactions on Algorithms10.1145/317853814:3(1-31)Online publication date: 16-Jun-2018
    • Show More Cited By

    View Options

    Login options

    View options

    PDF

    View or Download as a PDF file.

    PDF

    eReader

    View online with eReader.

    eReader

    Figures

    Tables

    Media

    Share

    Share

    Share this Publication link

    Share on social media