Unique Games Conjecture - Discussion and Alternatives

Discussion and Alternatives

Currently there is no consensus regarding the truth of the unique games conjecture. Certain stronger forms of the conjecture have been disproved.

A different form of the conjecture postulates that distinguishing the case when the value of a unique game is at least 1 − δ from the case when the value is at most ε is impossible for polynomial-time algorithms (but perhaps not NP-hard). This form of the conjecture would still be useful for applications in hardness of approximation.

The constant δ > 0 in the above formulations of the conjecture is necessary unless P = NP. If the uniqueness requirement is removed the corresponding statement is known to be true by the parallel repetition theorem, even when δ = 0.

In 2010, Arora, Barak and Steurer found a subexponential time approximation algorithm for unique games problem.

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