The Rank-Width of Edge-Coloured Graphs

A C-coloured graph is a graph, that is possibly directed, where the edges are coloured with colours from the set C. Clique-width is a complexity measure for C-coloured graphs, for finite sets C. Rank-width is an equivalent complexity measure for undirected graphs and has good algorithmic and structural properties. It is in particular related to the vertex-minor relation. We discuss some possible extensions of the notion of rank-width to C-coloured graphs. There is not a unique natural notion of rank-width for C-coloured graphs. We define two notions of rank-width for them, both based on a coding of C-coloured graphs by ${\mathbb{F}}^{*}$ -graphs— $\mathbb {F}$ -coloured graphs where each edge has exactly one colour from $\mathbb{F}\setminus \{0\},\ \mathbb{F}$ a field—and named respectively $\mathbb{F}$ -rank-width and $\mathbb {F}$ -bi-rank-width. The two notions are equivalent to clique-width. We then present a notion of vertex-minor for $\mathbb{F}^{*}$ -graphs and prove that $\mathbb{F}^{*}$ -graphs of bounded $\mathbb{F}$ -rank-width are characterised by a list of $\mathbb{F}^{*}$ -graphs to exclude as vertex-minors (this list is finite if $\mathbb{F}$ is finite). An algorithm that decides in time O(n ³) whether an $\mathbb{F}^{*}$ -graph with n vertices has $\mathbb{F}$ -rank-width (resp. $\mathbb{F}$ -bi-rank-width) at most k, for fixed k and fixed finite field $\mathbb{F}$ , is also given. Graph operations to check MSOL-definable properties on $\mathbb{F}^{*}$ -graphs of bounded $\mathbb{F}$ -rank-width (resp. $\mathbb{F}$ -bi-rank-width) are presented. A specialisation of all these notions to graphs without edge colours is presented, which shows that our results generalise the ones in undirected graphs.     

A complexity perspective on entailment of parameterized linear constraints

Extending linear constraints by admitting parameters allows for more abstract problem modeling and reasoning. A lot of focus has been given to conducting research that demonstrates the usefulness of parameterized linear constraints and implementing tools that utilize their modeling strength. However, there is no approach that considers basic theoretical tools related to such constraints that allow for reasoning over them. Hence, in this paper we introduce satisfiability with respect to polyhedral sets and entailment for the class of parameterized linear constraints. In order to study the computational complexities of these problems, we relate them to classes of quantified linear implications. The problem of satisfiability with respect to polyhedral sets is then shown to be co- $\mathbb{NP}$ hard. The entailment problem is also shown to be co- $\mathbb{NP}$ hard in its general form. Nevertheless, we characterize some subclasses for which this problem is in ?. Furthermore, we examine a weakening and a strengthening extension of the entailment problem. The weak entailment problem is proved to be $\mathbb{NP}$ complete. On the other hand, the strong entailment problem is shown to be co- $\mathbb{NP}$ hard.     

Computational complexity and approximability of social welfare optimization in multiagent resource allocation

A central task in multiagent resource allocation, which provides mechanisms to allocate (bundles of) resources to agents, is to maximize social welfare. We assume resources to be indivisible and nonshareable and agents to express their utilities over bundles of resources, where utilities can be represented in the bundle form, the $k$ -additive form, and as straight-line programs. We study the computational complexity of social welfare optimization in multiagent resource allocation, where we consider utilitarian and egalitarian social welfare and social welfare by the Nash product. Solving some of the open problems raised by Chevaleyre et al. (2006) and confirming their conjectures, we prove that egalitarian social welfare optimization is $\mathrm{NP}$ -complete for the bundle form, and both exact utilitarian and exact egalitarian social welfare optimization are $\mathrm{DP}$ -complete, each for both the bundle and the $2$ -additive form, where $\mathrm{DP}$ is the second level of the boolean hierarchy over  $\mathrm{NP}$ . In addition, we prove that social welfare optimization by the Nash product is $\mathrm{NP}$ -complete for both the bundle and the $1$ -additive form, and that the exact variants are $\mathrm{DP}$ -complete for the bundle and the $3$ -additive form. For utility functions represented as straight-line programs, we show $\mathrm{NP}$ -completeness for egalitarian social welfare optimization and social welfare optimization by the Nash product. Finally, we show that social welfare optimization by the Nash product in the $1$ -additive form is hard to approximate, yet we also give fully polynomial-time approximation schemes for egalitarian and Nash product social welfare optimization in the $1$ -additive form with a fixed number of agents.     

On matrices, automata, and double counting in constraint programming

Matrix models are ubiquitous for constraint problems. Many such problems have a matrix of variables $\mathcal{M}$ , with the same constraint C defined by a finite-state automaton $\mathcal{A}$ on each row of $\mathcal{M}$ and a global cardinality constraint $\mathit{gcc}$ on each column of $\mathcal{M}$ . We give two methods for deriving, by double counting, necessary conditions on the cardinality variables of the $\mathit{gcc}$ constraints from the automaton $\mathcal{A}$ . The first method yields linear necessary conditions and simple arithmetic constraints. The second method introduces the cardinality automaton, which abstracts the overall behaviour of all the row automata and can be encoded by a set of linear constraints. We also provide a domain consistency filtering algorithm for the conjunction of lexicographic ordering constraints between adjacent rows of $\mathcal{M}$ and (possibly different) automaton constraints on the rows. We evaluate the impact of our methods in terms of runtime and search effort on a large set of nurse rostering problem instances.     

A new set of generators and a physical interpretation for the SU (3) finite subgroup D(9,1,1;2,1,1)

After 100 years of effort, the classification of all the finite subgroups of $SU(3)$ is yet incomplete. The most recently updated list can be found in Ludl (J Phys A Math Theory 44:255204, 2011), where the structure of the series $(C)$ and $(D)$ of $SU(3)$ -subgroups is studied. We provide a minimal set of generators for one of these groups which has order $162$ . These generators appear up to phase as the image of an irreducible unitary braid group representation issued from the Jones–Kauffman version of $SU(2)$ Chern–Simons theory at level $4$ . In light of these new generators, we study the structure of the group in detail and recover the fact that it is isomorphic to the semidirect product $\mathbb Z _9\times \mathbb Z _3\rtimes S_3$ with respect to conjugation.     

On reducing factorization to the discrete logarithm problem modulo a composite

The discrete logarithm problem modulo a composite??abbreviate it as DLPC??is the following: given a (possibly) composite integer n??? 1 and elements ${a, b \in \mathbb{Z}_n^*}$ , determine an ${x \in \mathbb{N}}$ satisfying a ^x ?=?b if one exists. The question whether integer factoring can be reduced in deterministic polynomial time to the DLPC remains open. In this paper we consider the problem ${{\rm DLPC}_\varepsilon}$ obtained by adding in the DLPC the constraint ${x\le (1-\varepsilon)n}$ , where ${\varepsilon}$ is an arbitrary fixed number, ${0 < \varepsilon\le\frac{1}{2}}$ . We prove that factoring n reduces in deterministic subexponential time to the ${{\rm DLPC}_\varepsilon}$ with ${O_\varepsilon((\ln n)^2)}$ queries for moduli less or equal to n.     

Numerical solutions of AXB = C for mirrorsymmetric matrix X under a specified submatrix constraint

Mirrorsymmetric matrices, which are the iteraction matrices of mirrorsymmetric structures, have important application in studying odd/even-mode decomposition of symmetric multiconductor transmission lines (MTL). In this paper we present an efficient algorithm for minimizing ${\|AXB-C\|}$ where ${\|\cdot\|}$ is the Frobenius norm, ${A\in \mathbb{R}^{m\times n}}$ , ${B\in \mathbb{R}^{n\times s}}$ , ${C\in \mathbb{R}^{m\times s}}$ and ${X\in \mathbb{R}^{n\times n}}$ is mirrorsymmetric with a specified central submatrix [x _ij ] _{r≤i, j≤n-r} . Our algorithm produces a suitable X such that AXB = C in finitely many steps, if such an X exists. We show that the algorithm is stable any case, and we give results of numerical experiments that support this claim.     

Distinguishing and relating higher-order and first-order processes by expressiveness

This is a paper on distinguishing and relating two important kinds of calculi through expressiveness, settling some critical but long unanswered questions. The delimitation of higher-order and first-order process calculi is a basic and pivotal topic in the study of process theory. Particularly, expressiveness studies mutual encodability, which helps decide whether process-passing or name-passing is more fundamental, and the way they ought to be used in both theory and practice. In this paper, we contribute to such demarcation with three major results. Firstly $\pi $ (first-order pi-calculus) can faithfully express $\varPi $ (basic higher-order pi-calculus). The calculus $\varPi $ has the elementary operators (input, output, composition and restriction). This actually is a corollary of a more general result, that $\pi $ can encode $\varPi ^r$ ( $\varPi $ enriched with the relabelling operator). Secondly $\varPi $ cannot interpret $\pi $ reasonably. This is of more significance since it separates $\varPi $ and $\pi $ by drawing a well-defined boundary. Thirdly an encoding from $\pi $ to $\varPi ^r$ is revisited and discussed, which not only implies how to make $\varPi $ more useful but also stresses the importance of name-passing in $\pi $ .     

Self-orthogonal codes with dual distance three and quantum codes with distance three over \mathbb F _5

Self-orthogonal codes with dual distance three and quantum codes with distance three constructed from self-orthogonal codes over $\mathbb F _5$ are discussed in this paper. Firstly, for given code length $n\ge 5$ , a $[n,k]_{5}$ self-orthogonal code with minimal dimension $k$ and dual distance three is constructed. Secondly, for each $n\ge 5$ , two nested self-orthogonal codes with dual distance two and three are constructed, and consequently quantum code of length $n$ and distance three is constructed via Steane construction. All of these quantum codes constructed via Steane construction are optimal or near optimal according to the quantum Hamming bound.     

Arithmetizing Classes Around \textsf{NC} 1 and \textsf{L}

The parallel complexity class $\textsf{NC}$ ¹ has many equivalent models such as polynomial size formulae and bounded width branching programs. Caussinus et al. (J. Comput. Syst. Sci. 57:200–212, 1992) considered arithmetizations of two of these classes, $\textsf{\#NC}$ ¹ and $\textsf{\#BWBP}$ . We further this study to include arithmetization of other classes. In particular, we show that counting paths in branching programs over visibly pushdown automata is in $\textsf{FLogDCFL}$ , while counting proof-trees in logarithmic width formulae has the same power as $\textsf{\#NC}$ ¹. We also consider polynomial-degree restrictions of $\textsf{SC}$ ⁱ , denoted $\textsf{sSC}$ ⁱ , and show that the Boolean class $\textsf{sSC}$ ¹ is sandwiched between $\textsf{NC}$ ¹ and $\textsf{L}$ , whereas $\textsf{sSC}$ ⁰ equals $\textsf{NC}$ ¹. On the other hand, the arithmetic class $\textsf{\#sSC}$ ⁰ contains $\textsf{\#BWBP}$ and is contained in $\textsf{FL}$ , and $\textsf{\#sSC}$ ¹ contains $\textsf{\#NC}$ ¹ and is in $\textsf{SC}$ ². We also investigate some closure properties of the newly defined arithmetic classes.     

Solving Convection-Diffusion Problems on Curved Domains by Extensions from Subdomains

We present a technique for numerically solving convection-diffusion problems in domains $\varOmega $ with curved boundary. The technique consists in approximating the domain $\varOmega $ by polyhedral subdomains $\mathsf{{D}}_h$ where a finite element method is used to solve for the approximate solution. The approximation is then suitably extended to the remaining part of the domain $\varOmega $ . This approach allows for the use of only polyhedral elements; there is no need of fitting the boundary in order to obtain an accurate approximation of the solution. To achieve this, the boundary condition on the border of $\varOmega $ is transferred to the border of $\mathsf{D }_h$ by using simple line integrals. We apply this technique to the hybridizable discontinuous Galerkin method and provide extensive numerical experiments showing that, whenever the distance of $\mathsf{{D}}_h$ to $\partial \varOmega $ is of order of the meshsize $h$ , the convergence properties of the resulting method are the same as those for the case in which $\varOmega =\mathsf{{D}}_h$ . We also show numerical evidence indicating that the ratio of the $L^2(\varOmega )$ norm of the error in the scalar variable computed with $d>0$ to that of that computed with $d=0$ remains constant (and fairly close to one), whenever the distance $d$ is proportional to $\min \{h,Pe^{-1}\}/(k+1)^2$ , where $Pe$ is the so-called Péclet number.     

Geometric discord and measurement-induced nonlocality for well known bound entangled states

We employ geometric discord and measurement induced nonlocality to quantify quantumness of some well-known bipartite bound entangled states, namely the two families of Horodecki’s ( $2\otimes 4, 3\otimes 3$ and $4\otimes 4$ dimensional) bound entangled states and that of Bennett et al.’s in $3\otimes 3$ dimension. In most of the cases our results are analytic and both the measures attain relatively small value. The amount of quantumness in the $4\otimes 4$ bound entangled state of Benatti et al. and the $2\otimes 8$ state having the same matrix representation (in computational basis) is same. Coincidently, the $2m\otimes 2m$ Werner and isotropic states also exhibit the same property, when seen as $2\otimes 2m^2$ dimensional states.     

Completions of cut systems in Q-sets

Let $ Q$ be a complete residuated lattice. Let $\text {SetR}(Q)$ be the category of sets with similarity relations with values in $ Q$ (called $ Q$ -sets), which is an analogy of the category of classical sets with relations as morphisms. A cut in an $ Q$ -set $(A,\delta )$ is a system $(C_{\alpha })_{\alpha \in Q}$ , where $C_{\alpha }$ are subsets of $A\times Q$ . It is well known that in the category $\text {SetR}(Q)$ , there is a close relation between special cuts (called f-cuts) in an $ Q$ -set on one hand and fuzzy sets in the same $ Q$ -set, on the other hand. Moreover, there exists a completion procedure according to which any cut $(C_{\alpha })_{\alpha }$ can be extended onto an f-cut $(\overline{C_{\alpha }})_{\alpha }$ . In the paper, we prove that the completion procedure is, in some sense, the best possible. This will be expressed by the theorem which states that the category of f-cuts is a full reflective subcategory in the category of cuts.     

\lambda -Statistical convergence of fuzzy numbers and fuzzy functions of order \theta

In this paper, we introduce the concept of $\lambda $ -statistical convergence of order $\theta $ and strong $\lambda $ -summability of order $\theta $ for the sequence of fuzzy numbers. Further the same concept is extended to the sequence of fuzzy functions and introduce the spaces like $S_\lambda ^\theta (\hat{f})$ and $\omega _{\lambda p} ^\theta (\hat{f})$ . Some inclusion relations in those spaces and also the underlying relation between these two spaces are also obtained.     

Uncertainty and certainty relations for complementary qubit observables in terms of Tsallis’ entropies

Uncertainty relations for more than two observables have found use in quantum information, though commonly known relations pertain to a pair of observables. We present novel uncertainty and certainty relations of state-independent form for the three Pauli observables with use of the Tsallis $\alpha $ -entropies. For all real $\alpha \in (0;1]$ and integer $\alpha \ge 2$ , lower bounds on the sum of three $\alpha $ -entropies are obtained. These bounds are tight in the sense that they are always reached with certain pure states. The necessary and sufficient condition for equality is that the qubit state is an eigenstate of one of the Pauli observables. Using concavity with respect to the parameter $\alpha $ , we derive approximate lower bounds for non-integer $\alpha \in (1;+\infty )$ . In the case of pure states, the developed method also allows to obtain upper bounds on the entropic sum for real $\alpha \in (0;1]$ and integer $\alpha \ge 2$ . For applied purposes, entropic bounds are often used with averaging over the individual entropies. Combining the obtained bounds leads to a band, in which the rescaled average $\alpha $ -entropy ranges in the pure-state case. A width of this band is essentially dependent on $\alpha $ . It can be interpreted as an evidence for sensitivity in quantifying the complementarity.     

Self-Referential Justifications in Epistemic Logic

This paper is devoted to the study of self-referential proofs and/or justifications, i.e., valid proofs that prove statements about these same proofs. The goal is to investigate whether such self-referential justifications are present in the reasoning described by standard modal epistemic logics such as  $\mathsf{S4}$ . We argue that the modal language by itself is too coarse to capture this concept of self-referentiality and that the language of justification logic can serve as an adequate refinement. We consider well-known modal logics of knowledge/belief and show, using explicit justifications, that $\mathsf{S4}$ , $\mathsf{D4}$ , $\mathsf{K4}$ , and  $\mathsf{T}$ with their respective justification counterparts  $\mathsf{LP}$ , $\mathsf{JD4}$ , $\mathsf{J4}$ , and  $\mathsf{JT}$ describe knowledge that is self-referential in some strong sense. We also demonstrate that self-referentiality can be avoided for  $\mathsf{K}$ and  $\mathsf{D}$ . In order to prove the former result, we develop a machinery of minimal evidence functions used to effectively build models for justification logics. We observe that the calculus used to construct the minimal functions axiomatizes the reflected fragments of justification logics. We also discuss difficulties that result from an introduction of negative introspection.     

Null controllability of Kolmogorov-type equations

We study the null controllability of Kolmogorov-type equations $\partial _t f + v^\gamma \partial _x f - \partial _v^2 f = u(t,x,v) 1_{\omega }(x,v)$ in a rectangle $\Omega $ , under an additive control supported in an open subset $\omega $ of $\Omega $ . For $\gamma =1$ , with periodic-type boundary conditions, we prove that null controllability holds in any positive time, with any control support $\omega $ . This improves the previous result by Beauchard and Zuazua (Ann Ins H Poincaré Anal Non Linéaire 26:1793–1815, 2009), in which the control support was a horizontal strip. With Dirichlet boundary conditions and a horizontal strip as control support, we prove that null controllability holds in any positive time if $\gamma =1$ or if $\gamma =2$ and $\omega $ contains the segment $\{v=0\}$ , and only in large time if $\gamma =2$ and $\omega $ does not contain the segment $\{v=0\}$ . Our approach, inspired from Benabdallah et al. (C R Math Acad Sci Paris 344(6):357–362, 2007), Lebeau and Robbiano (Commun Partial Differ Equ 20:335–356, 1995), is based on two key ingredients: the observability of the Fourier components of the solution of the adjoint system, uniformly with respect to the frequency, and the explicit exponential decay rate of these Fourier components.     

Interpolation splines minimizing a semi-norm

Using S.L. Sobolev’s method, we construct the interpolation splines minimizing the semi-norm in $K_2(P_2)$ , where $K_2(P_2)$ is the space of functions $\phi $ such that $\phi ^{\prime } $ is absolutely continuous, $\phi ^{\prime \prime } $ belongs to $L_2(0,1)$ and $\int _0^1(\varphi ^{\prime \prime }(x)+\varphi (x))^2dx<\infty $ . Explicit formulas for coefficients of the interpolation splines are obtained. The resulting interpolation spline is exact for the trigonometric functions $\sin x$ and $\cos x$ . Finally, in a few numerical examples the qualities of the defined splines and $D^2$ -splines are compared. Furthermore, the relationship of the defined splines with an optimal quadrature formula is shown.     

Quantum discord in spin systems with dipole–dipole interaction

The behavior of total quantum correlations (discord) in dimers consisting of dipolar-coupled spins 1/2 are studied. We found that the discord $Q=0$ at absolute zero temperature. As the temperature $T$ increases, the quantum correlations in the system increase at first from zero to its maximum and then decrease to zero according to the asymptotic law $T^{-2}$ . It is also shown that in absence of external magnetic field $B$ , the classical correlations $C$ at $T\rightarrow 0$ are, vice versa, maximal. Our calculations predict that in crystalline gypsum $\hbox {CaSO}_{4}\cdot \hbox {2H}_{2}{\hbox {O}}$ the value of natural $(B=0)$ quantum discord between nuclear spins of hydrogen atoms is maximal at the temperature of 0.644  $\upmu $ K, and for 1,2-dichloroethane $\hbox {H}_{2}$ ClC– $\hbox {CH}_{2}{\hbox {Cl}}$ the discord achieves the largest value at $T=0.517~\upmu $ K. In both cases, the discord equals $Q\approx 0.083$  bit/dimer what is $8.3\,\%$ of its upper limit in two-qubit systems. We estimate also that for gypsum at room temperature $Q\sim 10^{-18}$  bit/dimer, and for 1,2-dichloroethane at $T=90$  K the discord is $Q\sim 10^{-17}$  bit per a dimer.     

Pseudorandom generators for CC0[p] and the Fourier spectrum of low-degree polynomials over finite fields

In this paper, we give the first construction of a pseudorandom generator, with seed length O(log n), for CC⁰[p], the class of constant-depth circuits with unbounded fan-in MOD _p gates, for some prime p. More accurately, the seed length of our generator is O(log n) for any constant error ${\epsilon > 0}$ . In fact, we obtain our generator by fooling distributions generated by low-degree polynomials, over ${\mathbb{F}_p}$ , when evaluated on the Boolean cube. This result significantly extends previous constructions that either required a long seed (Luby et al. 1993) or could only fool the distribution generated by linear functions over ${\mathbb{F}_p}$ , when evaluated on the Boolean cube (Lovett et al. 2009; Meka & Zuckerman 2009). En route of constructing our PRG, we prove two structural results for low-degree polynomials over finite fields that can be of independent interest.

1. Let f be an n-variate degree d polynomial over ${\mathbb{F}_p}$ . Then, for every ${\epsilon > 0}$ , there exists a subset ${S \subset [n]}$ , whose size depends only on d and ${\epsilon}$ , such that ${\sum_{\alpha \in \mathbb{F}_p^n: \alpha \ne 0, \alpha_S=0}|\hat{f}(\alpha)|^2 \leq \epsilon}$ . Namely, there is a constant size subset S such that the total weight of the nonzero Fourier coefficients that do not involve any variable from S is small.
2. Let f be an n-variate degree d polynomial over ${\mathbb{F}_p}$ . If the distribution of f when applied to uniform zero–one bits is ${\epsilon}$ -far (in statistical distance) from its distribution when applied to biased bits, then for every ${\delta > 0}$ , f can be approximated over zero–one bits, up to error δ, by a function of a small number (depending only on ${\epsilon,\delta}$ and d) of lower degree polynomials.