Sublogarithmic awake complexity with polynomially many rounds

Determine whether an $O(\log \Delta)$-approximation for Minimum Dominating Set can be achieved with $o(\log \Delta)$ awake complexity when polynomially many synchronous rounds are permitted in the sleeping distributed model.

Background

The algorithms in the paper do not establish a tradeoff in which increasing the total round complexity permits a lower awake complexity. The unresolved question concerns whether the O(log⁡Δ)O(\log \Delta) approximation guarantee can coexist with sublogarithmic awake complexity even when the algorithm is allowed polynomially many rounds, rather than being restricted to the paper's near-O(log⁡2Δ)O(\log^2\Delta) round bounds.

References

It is also natural to ask whether allowing a larger round complexity can lead to lower awake complexity. Our current techniques do not give such a tradeoff, and we do not know whether an $O(\log\Delta)$-approximation with $o(\log\Delta)$ awake complexity can be obtained even if polynomially many rounds are allowed.

— Approximating Minimum Dominating Set with Few Awake Rounds  (2608.19096 - Ji et al., 19 Aug 2026) in Section 6, Conclusions