Special Issue Dedicated To The Thirty-Sixth Annual ACM Symposium On Theory Of Computing (STOC 2004)

Abstract

This volume comprises the polished and fully refereed versions of a selection of papers presented at the Thirty-Sixth Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC 2004), held in Chicago, Illinois, June 13-15, 2004. Unrefereed preliminary versions of the papers presented at the symposium appeared in the proceedings of the meeting, published by ACM. The symposium was sponsored by the ACM Special Interest Group on Algorithms and Computation Theory (SIGACT). The STOC 2004 Program Committee consisted of Andris Ambainis, Laszlo Babai (chair), Boaz Barak, Moses Charikar, Irit Dinur, Herbert Edelsbrunner, Sandy Irani, Adam Klivans, Vladlen Koltun, Robert Krauthgamer, Satya Lokam, Tal Malkin, Oded Regev, Alexander Russell, Eva Tardos, Mikkel Thorup, D. Sivakumar, Chris Umans, and Eric Vigoda. Out of 271 "Extended Abstracts" submitted to the STOC 2004 Program Committee, 70 were selected for presentation at the symposium. Sixteen out of those 70 papers were invited to this volume. The authors of 5 of the invited papers declined, and the remaining 11 accepted the invitation. One of the 11 papers was not completed by the deadline; one other paper was found to fall short of SICOMP standards. The present volume includes the remaining 9 papers. This collection of papers encompasses a wide variety of questions and methods in theoretical computer science, often shedding new light on entire areas with a fresh approach. The topics include fundamental questions of complexity theory and algorithms as well as foundational mathematical problems. Several papers use methods of "continuous mathematics" to attack discrete optimization problems. Of the areas represented in this volume that have relatively recently gained prominence in the theory of computing, I should mention quantum computing and the theory of metric embeddings. This issue includes the journal versions of the two papers that shared the 2004 Danny Lewin Best Student Paper award. One of them, by Scott Aaronson, shows how quantum arguments inspire new results in a classical model; the other, by Jonathan Kelner, demonstrates the relevance of conformal geometry to the algorithmic question of partitioning graphs into clusters. All papers were refereed in accordance with SICOMP's stringent standards, and most of them were substantially updated in the process. We take this opportunity to thank all the referees whose anonymous work has significantly contributed to the value of this volume. Special issues dedicated to STOC have a distinguished history; a brief review of this history seems to be in order. SIGACT, the premier U.S.-based organization of theoretical computer science, has sponsored the publication of special issues to its annual STOC conferences since the second STOC held in 1970; the Journal of Computer and System Sciences (JCSS) was designated the venue of the publication. JCSS published 34 STOC special issues, starting with the 2nd STOC (JCSS 5:3, June 1971) and ending with the 35th STOC (JCSS 69:3, November 2004). The volumes from 1978 onward are accessible to subscribers on the Elsevier website at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/ It was an honor to edit the present special issue for the SIAM Journal on Computing. My personal remarks on the change of venue can be found on my home page.