Hardness of Approximate Diameter: Now for Undirected Graphs

TL;DR

This paper establishes that the simple linear-time 2-approximation algorithm for graph diameter is optimal for undirected graphs under SETH, extending known hardness results from directed to undirected graphs.

Contribution

It proves a tight lower bound matching the known tradeoff curve for directed graphs, now also applicable to undirected graphs, using new fine-grained reduction tools.

Findings

The 2-approximation for diameter in undirected graphs is SETH-hard to improve.

The paper extends hardness results from directed to undirected graphs.

New reduction techniques for undirected graph problems are introduced.

Abstract

Approximating the graph diameter is a basic task of both theoretical and practical interest. A simple folklore algorithm can output a 2-approximation to the diameter in linear time by running BFS from an arbitrary vertex. It has been open whether a better approximation is possible in near-linear time. A series of papers on fine-grained complexity have led to strong hardness results for diameter in directed graphs, culminating in a recent tradeoff curve independently discovered by [Li, STOC'21] and [Dalirrooyfard and Wein, STOC'21], showing that under the Strong Exponential Time Hypothesis (SETH), for any integer $k\ge 2$ and $\delta>0$, a $2-\frac{1}{k}-\delta$ approximation for diameter in directed $m$-edge graphs requires $mn^{1+1/(k-1)-o(1)}$ time. In particular, the simple linear time $2$-approximation algorithm is optimal for directed graphs. In this paper we prove that the same tradeoff lower bound curve is possible for undirected graphs as well, extending results of [Roditty and Vassilevska W., STOC'13], [Li'20] and [Bonnet, ICALP'21] who proved the first few cases of the curve, $k=2,3$ and $4$, respectively. Our result shows in particular that the simple linear time $2$-approximation algorithm is also optimal for undirected graphs. To obtain our result we develop new tools for fine-grained reductions that could be useful for proving SETH-based hardness for other problems in undirected graphs related to distance computation.