Higher Lower Bounds from the 3SUM Conjecture

Tsvi Kopelowitz; Seth Pettie; Ely Porat

Home/Archive/arXiv

arXiv · 1407.6756

Higher Lower Bounds from the 3SUM Conjecture

Tsvi Kopelowitz·Seth Pettie·Ely Porat

View original source ↗Read source document ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

The 3SUM conjecture has proven to be a valuable tool for proving conditional lower bounds on dynamic data structures and graph problems. This line of work was initiated by P\v{a}tra\c{s}cu (STOC 2010) who reduced 3SUM to an offline SetDisjointness problem. However, the reduction introduced by P\v{a}tra\c{s}cu suffers from several inefficiencies, making it difficult to obtain tight conditional lower bounds from the 3SUM conjecture. In this paper we address many of the deficiencies of P\v{a}tra\c{s}cu's framework. We give new and efficient reductions from 3SUM to offline SetDisjointness and offline SetIntersection (the reporting version of SetDisjointness) which leads to polynomially higher lower bounds on several problems. Using our reductions, we are able to show the essential optimality of several algorithms, assuming the 3SUM conjecture. - Chiba and Nishizeki's $O(m\alpha)$-time algorithm (SICOMP 1985) for enumerating all triangles in a graph with arboricity/degeneracy $\alpha$ is essentially optimal, for any $\alpha$. - Bj{\o}rklund, Pagh, Williams, and Zwick's algorithm (ICALP 2014) for listing $t$ triangles is essentially optimal (assuming the matrix multiplication exponent is $\omega=2$). - Any static data structure for SetDisjointness that answers queries in constant time must spend $\Omega(N^{2-o(1)})$ time in preprocessing, where $N$ is the size of the set system. These statements were unattainable via P\v{a}tra\c{s}cu's reductions. We also introduce several new reductions from 3SUM to pattern matching problems and dynamic graph problems. Of particular interest are new conditional lower bounds for dynamic versions of Maximum Cardinality Matching, which introduce a new technique for obtaining amortized lower bounds.

Explore related subjects

cs.DS

Keep this discovery

BibTeX RIS

Tsvi Kopelowitz, Seth Pettie, Ely Porat. 2014-07-24. Higher Lower Bounds from the 3SUM Conjecture. https://arxiv.org/abs/1407.6756

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

arXiv2026

Quasi-Monte Carlo Beyond Hardy-Krause II: $(1 + \varepsilon)n$ Samples Suffice

Numerical integration studies how well one can estimate the integral of a function $f$ over $[0,1)^d$ using $n$ sample points. The two classical methods, Monte Carlo (MC) and quasi-Monte Carlo (QMC), have complementary strengths and weaknesses, and a fundamental question is to design an approach that combines the benefits of both. Recently, building on the transference principle in discrepancy theory, Bansal and Jiang~\cite{BJ25a} gave a randomized QMC method that bridges MC and QMC guarantees using only i.i.d.\ samples. Their method also goes beyond the classical Koksma--Hlawka inequality: it achieves integration error $\widetilde{O}_d(\sigma_{\mathsf{SO}}(f)/n)$, where the smoothed-out variation $\sigma_{\mathsf{SO}}(f)$ can be substantially smaller than the Hardy--Krause variation that governs the classical bound. However, their algorithm requires $n^2$ i.i.d.\ samples as input, and this quadratic blowup is inherent to any method based on the transference principle. In this work, we bypass the quadratic blowup: for any constant $\varepsilon > 0$, we show that $(1+\varepsilon)n$ i.i.d.\ samples suffice to both obtain the beyond-Hardy--Krause guarantee of~\cite{BJ25a}, resolving an open problem posed there, and to produce low-discrepancy point sequences. Our algorithms are variants of the online Haar-thinning method of Dwivedi, Feldheim, Gurel-Gurevich, and Ramdas~\cite{DFG+19}.

cs.DS↗

arXiv2026

A deterministic $(1+\varepsilon)^n$ approximation for the permanent of a nonnegative matrix

For every fixed $0<\varepsilon\le1$, we give a deterministic strongly polynomial algorithm that, given a nonnegative matrix $A\in\mathbb{R}_{\ge0}^{n\times n}$, returns $Q$ satisfying $\operatorname{per} A\le Q\le(1+\varepsilon)^n\operatorname{per} A$.

cs.DS↗

arXiv2026

Single-Exponential Algorithms and a Polynomial Kernel for Strong Connectivity Augmentation

Strong Connectivity Augmentation (SCA) asks whether a directed acyclic graph can be made strongly connected by adding at most $k$ prescribed links whose total weight is within a given budget. Klinkby, Misra, and Saurabh (SODA 2021) gave an $O^*(2^{O(k\log k)})$-time algorithm and asked whether the problem admits a single-exponential parameterized algorithm and a polynomial kernel. We answer both questions affirmatively: SCA can be solved in $O^*(9^k)$ time and admits a polynomial kernel with $O(k^4)$ vertices and $O(k^{16})$ bits. For unweighted SCA, we obtain $O^*(4^k)$ time and a kernel with $O(k^3)$ vertices. Our algorithms are based on a particularly simple reduction to Strongly Connected Spanning Subgraph with two edge costs.

cs.DS↗