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On the hardness of approximating minimum vertex cover. (English) Zbl 1084.68051

Summary: We prove the Minimum Vertex Cover problem to be NP-hard to approximate to within a factor of 1.3606, extending on previous PCP and hardness of approximation technique. To that end, one needs to develop a new proof framework, and to borrow and extend ideas from several fields.

MSC:

68Q17 Computational difficulty of problems (lower bounds, completeness, difficulty of approximation, etc.)