License: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license (CC BY 3.0)
When quoting this document, please refer to the following
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ITCS.2019.17
URN: urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-101100
URL: http://dagstuhl.sunsite.rwth-aachen.de/volltexte/2018/10110/
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C. S., Karthik ; Manurangsi, Pasin

On Closest Pair in Euclidean Metric: Monochromatic is as Hard as Bichromatic

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Abstract

Given a set of n points in R^d, the (monochromatic) Closest Pair problem asks to find a pair of distinct points in the set that are closest in the l_p-metric. Closest Pair is a fundamental problem in Computational Geometry and understanding its fine-grained complexity in the Euclidean metric when d=omega(log n) was raised as an open question in recent works (Abboud-Rubinstein-Williams [FOCS'17], Williams [SODA'18], David-Karthik-Laekhanukit [SoCG'18]).
In this paper, we show that for every p in R_{>= 1} cup {0}, under the Strong Exponential Time Hypothesis (SETH), for every epsilon>0, the following holds:
- No algorithm running in time O(n^{2-epsilon}) can solve the Closest Pair problem in d=(log n)^{Omega_{epsilon}(1)} dimensions in the l_p-metric.
- There exists delta = delta(epsilon)>0 and c = c(epsilon)>= 1 such that no algorithm running in time O(n^{1.5-epsilon}) can approximate Closest Pair problem to a factor of (1+delta) in d >= c log n dimensions in the l_p-metric.
In particular, our first result is shown by establishing the computational equivalence of the bichromatic Closest Pair problem and the (monochromatic) Closest Pair problem (up to n^{epsilon} factor in the running time) for d=(log n)^{Omega_epsilon(1)} dimensions.
Additionally, under SETH, we rule out nearly-polynomial factor approximation algorithms running in subquadratic time for the (monochromatic) Maximum Inner Product problem where we are given a set of n points in n^{o(1)}-dimensional Euclidean space and are required to find a pair of distinct points in the set that maximize the inner product.
At the heart of all our proofs is the construction of a dense bipartite graph with low contact dimension, i.e., we construct a balanced bipartite graph on n vertices with n^{2-epsilon} edges whose vertices can be realized as points in a (log n)^{Omega_epsilon(1)}-dimensional Euclidean space such that every pair of vertices which have an edge in the graph are at distance exactly 1 and every other pair of vertices are at distance greater than 1. This graph construction is inspired by the construction of locally dense codes introduced by Dumer-Miccancio-Sudan [IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory'03].

BibTeX - Entry

@InProceedings{cs_et_al:LIPIcs:2018:10110,
  author =	{Karthik C. S. and Pasin Manurangsi},
  title =	{{On Closest Pair in Euclidean Metric: Monochromatic is as Hard as Bichromatic}},
  booktitle =	{10th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science  Conference (ITCS 2019)},
  pages =	{17:1--17:16},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-095-8},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2018},
  volume =	{124},
  editor =	{Avrim Blum},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl--Leibniz-Zentrum fuer Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/volltexte/2018/10110},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-101100},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ITCS.2019.17},
  annote =	{Keywords: Closest Pair, Bichromatic Closest Pair, Contact Dimension, Fine-Grained Complexity}
}

Keywords: Closest Pair, Bichromatic Closest Pair, Contact Dimension, Fine-Grained Complexity
Collection: 10th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science Conference (ITCS 2019)
Issue Date: 2018
Date of publication: 08.01.2019


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