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Tight Inapproximability of Max Independent Set in Triangle-Free Graphs

lax-47·formalized by Édouard Bonnet @EdouardBonnet·created 2026-08-07·GitHub @e8e3010·Lean v4.30.0 epoch · mathlib c5ea00351c28

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    Abstract

    This submission formalizes the main inapproximability theorem of Tight Inapproximability of Max Independent Set in Triangle-Free Graphs. Assuming Håstad's promise hardness of Max Independent Set, it proves that, for every constant ε>0\varepsilon>0, a polynomial-time N1/2εN^{1/2-\varepsilon}-approximation algorithm on NN-vertex triangle-free graphs implies NPBPPNP\subseteq BPP.

    The reduction blows each vertex of an nn-vertex graph up into nn vertices, samples the blow-up edges independently, and resamples the edges of present triangles. The formalization proves triangle-freeness, completeness, the fixed-set soundness estimate, the finite-seed probability bound, and the final gap arithmetic. The infinite product table occurs only in the probabilistic analysis; the program itself reads a polynomially bounded finite family of uniform bits.

    Polynomial time, NPNP, and BPPBPP use a bounded interpreter for fixed finite binary multi-stack Turing machines. Every semantic answer is the output of that interpreter. The composed triangle-removal program has a fixed recursive evaluator whose state and operation count are produced by the same execution, and the proof derives explicit polynomial bounds for the reduction, the approximation-machine call, decoding, threshold arithmetic, and random bits.

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    Cite this

    @misc{lax-47,
      author = {Édouard Bonnet},
      title = {Tight Inapproximability of Max Independent Set in Triangle-Free Graphs},
      year = {2026},
      howpublished = {Lax Archive, lax-47},
      url = {https://laxarchive.org/lax-47/},
      note = {draft},
    }

    References

    1. Édouard Bonnet. Tight Inapproximability of Max Independent Set in Triangle-Free Graphs. 2026.
    2. Johan Håstad. Clique is hard to approximate within n1εn^{1-\varepsilon}. In 37th Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science 627–636, 1996. doi:10.1109/SFCS.1996.548522

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