On the power of symmetric linear programs

We consider families of symmetric linear programs (LPs) that decide a property of graphs (or other relational structures) in the sense that, for each size of graph, there is an LP defining a polyhedral lift that separates the integer points corresponding to graphs with the property from those corres...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Atserias, Albert|||0000-0002-3732-1989, Dawar, Anuj, Ochremiak, Joanna Regina
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2021
País:España
Institución:Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC)
Repositorio:UPCommons. Portal del coneixement obert de la UPC
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:upcommons.upc.edu:2117/384806
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/2117/384806
https://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3456297
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Linear programming
Extended formulations
Planted clique
Perfect matching
Symmetric group
Programació lineal
Àrees temàtiques de la UPC::Informàtica::Informàtica teòrica
Descripción
Sumario:We consider families of symmetric linear programs (LPs) that decide a property of graphs (or other relational structures) in the sense that, for each size of graph, there is an LP defining a polyhedral lift that separates the integer points corresponding to graphs with the property from those corresponding to graphs without the property. We show that this is equivalent, with at most polynomial blow-up in size, to families of symmetric Boolean circuits with threshold gates. In particular, when we consider polynomial-size LPs, the model is equivalent to definability in a non-uniform version of fixed-point logic with counting (FPC). Known upper and lower bounds for FPC apply to the non-uniform version. In particular, this implies that the class of graphs with perfect matchings has polynomial-size symmetric LPs, while we obtain an exponential lower bound for symmetric LPs for the class of Hamiltonian graphs. We compare and contrast this with previous results (Yannakakis 1991), showing that any symmetric LPs for the matching and TSP polytopes have exponential size. As an application, we establish that for random, uniformly distributed graphs, polynomial-size symmetric LPs are as powerful as general Boolean circuits. We illustrate the effect of this on the well-studied planted-clique problem.