Exploiting Low-Rank Structure in Max-K-Cut Problems

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Stevens, Ria, Liao, Fangshuo, Su, Barbara, Li, Jianqiang, Kyrillidis, Anastasios
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2026
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author Stevens, Ria
Liao, Fangshuo
Su, Barbara
Li, Jianqiang
Kyrillidis, Anastasios
author_facet Stevens, Ria
Liao, Fangshuo
Su, Barbara
Li, Jianqiang
Kyrillidis, Anastasios
contents We approach the Max-3-Cut problem through the lens of maximizing complex-valued quadratic forms and demonstrate that low-rank structure in the objective matrix can be exploited, leading to alternative algorithms to classical semidefinite programming (SDP) relaxations and heuristic techniques. We propose an algorithm for maximizing these quadratic forms over a domain of size $K$ that enumerates and evaluates a set of $O\left(n^{2r-1}\right)$ candidate solutions, where $n$ is the dimension of the matrix and $r$ represents the rank of an approximation of the objective. We prove that this candidate set is guaranteed to include the exact maximizer when $K=3$ (corresponding to Max-3-Cut) and the objective is low-rank, and provide approximation guarantees when the objective is a perturbation of a low-rank matrix. This construction results in a family of novel, inherently parallelizable and theoretically-motivated algorithms for Max-3-Cut. Extensive experimental results demonstrate that our approach achieves performance comparable to existing algorithms across a wide range of graphs, while being highly scalable.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_20376
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Exploiting Low-Rank Structure in Max-K-Cut Problems
Stevens, Ria
Liao, Fangshuo
Su, Barbara
Li, Jianqiang
Kyrillidis, Anastasios
Data Structures and Algorithms
Machine Learning
Optimization and Control
Quantum Physics
We approach the Max-3-Cut problem through the lens of maximizing complex-valued quadratic forms and demonstrate that low-rank structure in the objective matrix can be exploited, leading to alternative algorithms to classical semidefinite programming (SDP) relaxations and heuristic techniques. We propose an algorithm for maximizing these quadratic forms over a domain of size $K$ that enumerates and evaluates a set of $O\left(n^{2r-1}\right)$ candidate solutions, where $n$ is the dimension of the matrix and $r$ represents the rank of an approximation of the objective. We prove that this candidate set is guaranteed to include the exact maximizer when $K=3$ (corresponding to Max-3-Cut) and the objective is low-rank, and provide approximation guarantees when the objective is a perturbation of a low-rank matrix. This construction results in a family of novel, inherently parallelizable and theoretically-motivated algorithms for Max-3-Cut. Extensive experimental results demonstrate that our approach achieves performance comparable to existing algorithms across a wide range of graphs, while being highly scalable.
title Exploiting Low-Rank Structure in Max-K-Cut Problems
topic Data Structures and Algorithms
Machine Learning
Optimization and Control
Quantum Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.20376