Improving the inapproximability factors for reconfiguration problems

Determine larger constant inapproximability factors for the NP-hardness of approximation results obtained via the alphabet-reduction and gap-amplification framework for Maxmin Binary CSP Reconfiguration and its reductions, moving beyond the extremely small constants currently achieved.

Background

While the paper establishes constant-factor inapproximability under RIH with alphabet reduction, the explicit constant produced is extremely small, limiting practical significance.

The authors therefore pose the problem of strengthening the quantitative bounds to obtain more meaningful hardness factors.