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Main Authors: Jansen, Klaus, Mömke, Tobias, Schumacher, Björn
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.16805
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author Jansen, Klaus
Mömke, Tobias
Schumacher, Björn
author_facet Jansen, Klaus
Mömke, Tobias
Schumacher, Björn
contents We study hardness of reoptimization of the fundamental and hard to approximate SetCover problem. Reoptimization considers an instance together with a solution and a modified instance where the goal is to approximate the modified instance while utilizing the information gained by solution to the related instance. We study four different types of reoptimization for (weighted) SetCover: adding a set, removing a set, adding an element to the universe, and removing an element from the universe. A few of these cases are known to be easier to approximate than the classic SetCover problem. We show that all the other cases are essentially as hard to approximate as SetCover. The reoptimization problem of adding and removing an element in the unweighted case is known to admit a PTAS. For these settings we show that there is no EPTAS under common hardness assumptions via a novel combination of the classic way to show that a reoptimization problem is NP-hard and the relation between EPTAS and FPT.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_16805
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Hardness of SetCover Reoptimization
Jansen, Klaus
Mömke, Tobias
Schumacher, Björn
Computational Complexity
We study hardness of reoptimization of the fundamental and hard to approximate SetCover problem. Reoptimization considers an instance together with a solution and a modified instance where the goal is to approximate the modified instance while utilizing the information gained by solution to the related instance. We study four different types of reoptimization for (weighted) SetCover: adding a set, removing a set, adding an element to the universe, and removing an element from the universe. A few of these cases are known to be easier to approximate than the classic SetCover problem. We show that all the other cases are essentially as hard to approximate as SetCover. The reoptimization problem of adding and removing an element in the unweighted case is known to admit a PTAS. For these settings we show that there is no EPTAS under common hardness assumptions via a novel combination of the classic way to show that a reoptimization problem is NP-hard and the relation between EPTAS and FPT.
title Hardness of SetCover Reoptimization
topic Computational Complexity
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.16805