In the multicoloring problem, also known as (a:b)-coloring or b-fold coloring, we are given a graph G and a set of a colors, and the task is to assign a subset of b colors to each vertex of G so that adjacent vertices receive disjoint color subsets. This natural generalization of the classic coloring problem (the b=1 case) is equivalent to finding a homomorphism to the Kneser graph KG_{a,b}, and gives relaxations approaching the fractional chromatic number. We study the complexity of determining whether a graph has an (a:b)-coloring. Our main result is that this problem does not admit an algorithm with running time f(b) * 2^{o(log b) n}, for any computable f(b), unless the Exponential Time Hypothesis (ETH) fails. A (b+1)^n * poly(n)-time algorithm due to Nederlof [2008] shows that this is tight. A direct corollary of our result is that the graph homomorphism problem does not admit a 2^O(n+h) algorithm unless ETH fails, even if the target graph is required to be a Kneser graph. This refines the understanding given by the recent lower bound of Cygan et al. [SODA 2016]. The crucial ingredient in our hardness reduction is the usage of detecting matrices of Lindström [Canad. Math. Bull., 1965], which is a combinatorial tool that, to the best of our knowledge, has not yet been used for proving complexity lower bounds. As a side result, we prove that the running time of the algorithms of Abasi et al. [MFCS 2014] and of Gabizon et al. [ESA 2015] for the r-monomial detection problem are optimal under ETH.
@InProceedings{bonamy_et_al:LIPIcs.ESA.2017.18, author = {Bonamy, Marthe and Kowalik, Lukasz and Pilipczuk, Michal and Socala, Arkadiusz and Wrochna, Marcin}, title = {{Tight Lower Bounds for the Complexity of Multicoloring}}, booktitle = {25th Annual European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA 2017)}, pages = {18:1--18:14}, series = {Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)}, ISBN = {978-3-95977-049-1}, ISSN = {1868-8969}, year = {2017}, volume = {87}, editor = {Pruhs, Kirk and Sohler, Christian}, publisher = {Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik}, address = {Dagstuhl, Germany}, URL = {https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ESA.2017.18}, URN = {urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-78527}, doi = {10.4230/LIPIcs.ESA.2017.18}, annote = {Keywords: multicoloring, Kneser graph homomorphism, ETH lower bound} }
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