We show that for any odd k and any instance I of the max-kXOR constraint satisfaction problem, there is an efficient algorithm that finds an assignment satisfying at least a 1/2 + Omega(1/sqrt(D)) fraction of I's constraints, where D is a bound on the number of constraints that each variable occurs in. This improves both qualitatively and quantitatively on the recent work of Farhi, Goldstone, and Gutmann (2014), which gave a quantum algorithm to find an assignment satisfying a 1/2 Omega(D^{-3/4}) fraction of the equations. For arbitrary constraint satisfaction problems, we give a similar result for "triangle-free" instances; i.e., an efficient algorithm that finds an assignment satisfying at least a mu + Omega(1/sqrt(degree)) fraction of constraints, where mu is the fraction that would be satisfied by a uniformly random assignment.
@InProceedings{barak_et_al:LIPIcs.APPROX-RANDOM.2015.110, author = {Barak, Boaz and Moitra, Ankur and O’Donnell, Ryan and Raghavendra, Prasad and Regev, Oded and Steurer, David and Trevisan, Luca and Vijayaraghavan, Aravindan and Witmer, David and Wright, John}, title = {{Beating the Random Assignment on Constraint Satisfaction Problems of Bounded Degree}}, booktitle = {Approximation, Randomization, and Combinatorial Optimization. Algorithms and Techniques (APPROX/RANDOM 2015)}, pages = {110--123}, series = {Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)}, ISBN = {978-3-939897-89-7}, ISSN = {1868-8969}, year = {2015}, volume = {40}, editor = {Garg, Naveen and Jansen, Klaus and Rao, Anup and Rolim, Jos\'{e} D. P.}, publisher = {Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik}, address = {Dagstuhl, Germany}, URL = {https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.APPROX-RANDOM.2015.110}, URN = {urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-52981}, doi = {10.4230/LIPIcs.APPROX-RANDOM.2015.110}, annote = {Keywords: constraint satisfaction problems, bounded degree, advantage over random} }
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