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Publication
STOC 2008
Conference paper
On partitioning graphs via single commodity flows
Abstract
In this paper we obtain improved upper and lower bounds for the best approximation factor for SPARSEST CUT achievable in the cut-matching game framework proposed in Khandekar et al. [9], We show that this simple framework can be used to design combinatorial algorithms that achieve O(log n) approximation factor and whose running time is dominated by a poly-logarithmic number of single-commodity max-flow computations. This matches the performance of the algorithm of Arora and Kale [2], Moreover, we also show that it is impossible to get an approximation factor of better than Ω(√log n) in the cut-matching game framework. These results suggest that the simple and concrete abstraction of the cut-matching game may be powerful enough to capture the essential features of the complexity of SPARSEST CUT. Copyright 2008 ACM.