Search Results

Documents authored by Mande, Nikhil

Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.FSTTCS.2025.36
Hardness of Finding Kings and Strong Kings

Authors: Ziad Ismaili Alaoui and Nikhil Mande

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 360, 45th IARCS Annual Conference on Foundations of Software Technology and Theoretical Computer Science (FSTTCS 2025)

Abstract
A king in a directed graph is a vertex v such that every other vertex is reachable from v via a path of length at most 2. It is well known that every tournament (a complete graph where each edge has a direction) has at least one king. Our contributions in this work are: - We show that the query complexity of determining existence of a king in arbitrary n-vertex digraphs is Θ(n²). This is in stark contrast to the case where the input is a tournament, where Shen, Sheng, and Wu [SICOMP'03] showed that a king can be found in O(n^{3/2}) queries. - In an attempt to increase the "fairness" in the definition of tournament winners, Ho and Chang [IPL'03] defined a strong king to be a king k such that, for every v that dominates k, the number of length-2 paths from k to v is strictly larger than the number of length-2 paths from v to k. We show that the query complexity of finding a strong king in a tournament is Θ(n²). This answers a question of Biswas, Jayapaul, Raman, and Satti [DAM'22] in the negative. A key component in our proofs is the design of specific tournaments where every vertex is a king, and analyzing certain properties of these tournaments. We feel these constructions and properties are independently interesting and may lead to more interesting results about tournament solutions.
Cite as

Ziad Ismaili Alaoui and Nikhil Mande. Hardness of Finding Kings and Strong Kings. In 45th IARCS Annual Conference on Foundations of Software Technology and Theoretical Computer Science (FSTTCS 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 360, pp. 36:1-36:12, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

Copy BibTex To Clipboard

@InProceedings{ismailialaoui_et_al:LIPIcs.FSTTCS.2025.36,
  author =	{Ismaili Alaoui, Ziad and Mande, Nikhil},
  title =	{{Hardness of Finding Kings and Strong Kings}},
  booktitle =	{45th IARCS Annual Conference on Foundations of Software Technology and Theoretical Computer Science (FSTTCS 2025)},
  pages =	{36:1--36:12},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-406-2},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{360},
  editor =	{Aiswarya, C. and Mehta, Ruta and Roy, Subhajit},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.FSTTCS.2025.36},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-250856},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.FSTTCS.2025.36},
  annote =	{Keywords: Tournaments, kings, query complexity}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.MFCS.2025.17
Sensitivity and Query Complexity Under Uncertainty

Authors: Deepu Benson, Balagopal Komarath, Nikhil Mande, Sai Soumya Nalli, Jayalal Sarma, and Karteek Sreenivasaiah

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 345, 50th International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science (MFCS 2025)

Abstract
In this paper, we study the query complexity of Boolean functions in the presence of uncertainty, motivated by parallel computation with an unlimited number of processors where inputs are allowed to be unknown. We allow each query to produce three results: zero, one, or unknown. The output could also be: zero, one, or unknown, with the constraint that we should output "unknown" only when we cannot determine the answer from the revealed input bits. Such an extension of a Boolean function is called its hazard-free extension. - We prove an analogue of Huang’s celebrated sensitivity theorem [Annals of Mathematics, 2019] in our model of query complexity with uncertainty. - We show that the deterministic query complexity of the hazard-free extension of a Boolean function is at most quadratic in its randomized query complexity and quartic in its quantum query complexity, improving upon the best-known bounds in the Boolean world. - We exhibit an exponential gap between the smallest depth (size) of decision trees computing a Boolean function, and those computing its hazard-free extension. - We present general methods to convert decision trees for Boolean functions to those for their hazard-free counterparts, and show optimality of this construction. We also parameterize this result by the maximum number of unknown values in the input. - We show lower bounds on size complexity of decision trees for hazard-free extensions of Boolean functions in terms of the number of prime implicants and prime implicates of the underlying Boolean function.
Cite as

Deepu Benson, Balagopal Komarath, Nikhil Mande, Sai Soumya Nalli, Jayalal Sarma, and Karteek Sreenivasaiah. Sensitivity and Query Complexity Under Uncertainty. In 50th International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science (MFCS 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 345, pp. 17:1-17:17, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

Copy BibTex To Clipboard

@InProceedings{benson_et_al:LIPIcs.MFCS.2025.17,
  author =	{Benson, Deepu and Komarath, Balagopal and Mande, Nikhil and Nalli, Sai Soumya and Sarma, Jayalal and Sreenivasaiah, Karteek},
  title =	{{Sensitivity and Query Complexity Under Uncertainty}},
  booktitle =	{50th International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science (MFCS 2025)},
  pages =	{17:1--17:17},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-388-1},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{345},
  editor =	{Gawrychowski, Pawe{\l} and Mazowiecki, Filip and Skrzypczak, Micha{\l}},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.MFCS.2025.17},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-241240},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.MFCS.2025.17},
  annote =	{Keywords: CREW-PRAM, query complexity, decision trees, sensitivity, hazard-free extensions}
}
Any Issues?
X

Feedback on the Current Page

CAPTCHA

Thanks for your feedback!

Feedback submitted to Dagstuhl Publishing

Could not send message

Please try again later or send an E-mail
© 2023-2025 Schloss Dagstuhl – LZI GmbH About DROPS Imprint Privacy Contact