Extensions of the minimum cost homomorphism problem

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Publication:3578332



Abstract: Assume D is a finite set and R is a finite set of functions from D to the natural numbers. An instance of the minimum R-cost homomorphism problem (MinHomR) is a set of variables V subject to specified constraints together with a positive weight cvr for each combination of vinV and rinR. The aim is to find a function f:VightarrowD such that f satisfies all constraints and sumvinVsumrinRcvrr(f(v)) is minimized. This problem unifies well-known optimization problems such as the minimum cost homomorphism problem and the maximum solution problem, and this makes it a computationally interesting fragment of the valued CSP framework for optimization problems. We parameterize MinHomRleft(Gammaight) by {em constraint languages}, i.e. sets Gamma of relations that are allowed in constraints. A constraint language is called {em conservative} if every unary relation is a member of it; such constraint languages play an important role in understanding the structure of constraint problems. The dichotomy conjecture for MinHomR is the following statement: if Gamma is a constraint language, then MinHomRleft(Gammaight) is either polynomial-time solvable or NP-complete. For MinHom the dichotomy result has been recently obtained [Takhanov, STACS, 2010] and the goal of this paper is to expand this result to the case of MinHomR with conservative constraint language. For arbitrary R this problem is still open, but assuming certain restrictions on R we prove a dichotomy. As a consequence of this result we obtain a dichotomy for the conservative maximum solution problem.












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