Given a graph $G$, we consider the problem of finding the largest set
of edge-disjoint triangles contained in $G$. We show that even the
simpler case of decomposing the edges of
a sparse split graph $G$ into edge-disjoint triangles
is NP-complete. We show next that the case of a general ... more >>>

This note refers to the effect of the proximity parameter on the operation of (standard) property testers. Its bottom-line is that, except in pathological cases, the effect of the proximity parameter is restricted to determining the query complexity of the tester. The point is that, in non-pathological cases, the mapping ... more >>>

We develop a new notion called {\it tester of a class $\cM$ of
functions} $f:\cA\to \cC$ that maps the elements $\bfa\in \cA$ in
the domain $\cA$ of the function to a finite number (the size of
the tester) of elements $\bfb_1,\ldots,\bfb_t$ in a smaller
sub-domain $\cB\subset \cA$ where the property ... more >>>

We address the following problem: how to execute any algorithm P, for an unbounded number of executions, in the presence of an adversary who observes partial information on the internal state of the computation during executions. The security guarantee is that the adversary learns nothing, beyond P's input/output behavior.

This ... more >>>

We survey research that studies the connection between the computational complexity
of optimization problems on the one hand, and the duality gap between the primal and
dual optimization problems on the other. To our knowledge, this is the first survey that
connects the two very important areas. We further look ... more >>>

We develop a new method for proving explicit approximation lower bounds for TSP problems with bounded metrics improving on the best up to now known bounds. They almost match the best known bounds for unbounded metric TSP problems. In particular, we prove the best known lower bound for TSP with ... more >>>

A family of Boolean circuits $\{C_n\}_{n\geq 0}$ is called \emph{$\gamma(n)$-weakly uniform} if
there is a polynomial-time algorithm for deciding the direct-connection language of every $C_n$,
given \emph{advice} of size $\gamma(n)$. This is a relaxation of the usual notion of uniformity, which allows one
to interpolate between complete uniformity (when $\gamma(n)=0$) ... more >>>

Given a set of $n$ random $d$-dimensional boolean vectors with the promise that two of them are $\rho$-correlated with each other, how quickly can one find the two correlated vectors? We present a surprising and simple algorithm which, for any constant $\epsilon>0$ runs in (expected) time $d n^{\frac{3 \omega}{4}+\epsilon} poly(\frac{1}{\rho})< ... more >>>

Every pseudorandom generator is in particular a one-way function. If we only consider part of the output of the
pseudorandom generator is this still one-way? Here is a general setting formalizing this question. Suppose
$G:\{0,1\}^n\rightarrow \{0,1\}^{\ell(n)}$ is a pseudorandom generator with stretch $\ell(n)> n$. Let $M_R\in\{0,1\}^{m(n)\times \ell(n)}$ be a linear ... more >>>

In this paper we study quantum nondeterminism in multiparty communication. There are three (possibly) different types of nondeterminism in quantum computation: i) strong, ii) weak with classical proofs, and iii) weak with quantum proofs. Here we focus on the first one. A strong quantum nondeterministic protocol accepts a correct input ... more >>>

Lov\'{a}sz and Schrijver introduced several lift and project methods for $0$-$1$ integer programs, now collectively known as Lov\'{a}sz-Schrijver ($LS$) hierarchies. Several lower bounds have since been proven for the rank of various linear programming relaxations in the $LS$ and $LS_+$ hierarchies. In this paper we investigate rank bounds in the ... more >>>

We propose an abstract framework for studying search-to-decision reductions for NP. Specifically, we study the following witness finding problem: for a hidden nonempty set $W\subseteq\{0,1\}^n$, the goal is to output a witness in $W$ with constant probability by making randomized queries of the form ``is $Q\cap W$ nonempty?''\ where $Q\subseteq\{0,1\}^n$. ... more >>>

Invariance with respect to linear or affine transformations of the domain is arguably the most common symmetry exhibited by natural algebraic properties. In this work, we show that any low complexity affine-invariant property of multivariate functions over finite fields is testable with a constant number of queries. This immediately reproves, ... more >>>