Tighter approximation bounds for LPT scheduling in two special cases

$Q||C_{\max }$ denotes the problem of scheduling n jobs on m machines of different speeds such that the makespan is minimized. In the paper two special cases of $Q||C_{\max }$ are considered: case I, when $m?1$ machine speeds are equal, and there is only one faster machine; and case II, when machine speeds are all powers of 2 (2-divisible machines). Case I has been widely studied in the literature, while case II is significant in an approach to design so called monotone algorithms for the scheduling problem.We deal with the worst case approximation ratio of the classic list scheduling algorithm ‘Largest Processing Time (LPT)’. We provide an analysis of this ratio $\mathit{Lpt}/\mathit{Opt}$ for both special cases: For ‘one fast machine’, a tight bound of $(\sqrt{3}+1)/2\approx 1.3660$ is given. For 2-divisible machines, we show that in the worst case $1.3673<\mathit{Lpt}/\mathit{Opt}<1.4$. Besides, we prove another lower bound of $955/699>(\sqrt{3}+1)/2$ when LPT breaks ties arbitrarily.To our knowledge, the best previous lower and upper bounds were $(4/3,3/2?1/2m]$ in case I [T. Gonzalez, O.H. Ibarra, S. Sahni, Bounds for LPT schedules on uniform processors, SIAM Journal on Computing 6 (1) (1977) 155–166], respectively $[4/3?1/3m,3/2]$ in case II [R.L. Graham, Bounds on multiprocessing timing anomalies, SIAM Journal on Applied Mathematics 17 (1969) 416–429; A. Kovács, Fast monotone 3-approximation algorithm for scheduling related machines, in: Proc. 13th Europ. Symp. on Algs. (ESA), in: LNCS, vol. 3669, Springer, 2005, pp. 616–627]. Moreover, Gonzalez et al. conjectured the lower bound 4/3 to be tight in the ‘one fast machine’ case [T. Gonzalez, O.H. Ibarra, S. Sahni, Bounds for LPT schedules on uniform processors, SIAM Journal on Computing 6 (1) (1977) 155–166].     

Bivariate identities related to Chebyshev and Dickson polynomials over Fq

Let ${\mathbb{F}}_q$ be a field of q elements, where q is a power of an odd prime p. The polynomial $f(y)\in {\mathbb{F}}_q[y]$ defined by$f(y):={(1+\sqrt{y})}^{(q+1)/2}+{(1-\sqrt{y})}^{(q+1)/2}$ has the property that$f(1-y)=\rho (2)f(y),$ where ρ is the quadratic character on ${\mathbb{F}}_q$. This univariate identity was applied to prove a recent theorem of N. Katz. We formulate and prove a bivariate extension, and give an application to quadratic residuacity.     

Establishing strong connectivity using optimal radius half-disk antennas

Given a set S of points in the plane representing wireless devices, each point equipped with a directional antenna of radius r and aperture angle $\alpha ?180\mathrm{°}$, our goal is to find orientations and a minimum r for these antennas such that the induced communication graph is strongly connected. We show that $r=\sqrt{3}$ if $\alpha \in [180\mathrm{°},240\mathrm{°})$, $r=\sqrt{2}$ if $\alpha \in [240\mathrm{°},270\mathrm{°})$, $r=2\sin (36\mathrm{°})$ if $\alpha \in [270\mathrm{°},288\mathrm{°})$, and $r=1$ if $\alpha ?288\mathrm{°}$ suffices to establish strong connectivity, assuming that the longest edge in the Euclidean minimum spanning tree of S is 1. These results are worst-case optimal and match the lower bounds presented in [I. Caragiannis, C. Kaklamanis, E. Kranakis, D. Krizanc, A. Wiese, Communication in wireless networks with directional antennae, in: Proc. of the 20th Symp. on Parallelism in Algorithms and Architectures, 2008, pp. 344–351]. In contrast, $r=2$ is sometimes necessary when $\alpha <180\mathrm{°}$.     

The second and fourth moments of theta functions at their central point

Let χ range over the $(p?1)/2$ even Dirichlet characters mod $p?3$, a prime. Let $\theta (x,\chi )$ be the associated theta series. It is known that the square mean value of $\theta (1,\chi )$ is asymptotic to $p^{3/2}/4\sqrt{2}$ as p goes to infinity. We prove that the fourth mean value of $\theta (1,\chi )$ is asymptotic to $\frac{3}{16\pi }{p}^2\log p$ as p goes to infinity. We give similar results for mean values of odd Dirichlet characters mod p.     

Transcendence degree one function fields over a finite field with many automorphisms

Let $\mathbb{K}$ be the algebraic closure of a finite field ${\mathbb{F}}_q$ of odd characteristic p. For a positive integer m prime to p, let $F=\mathbb{K}(x,y)$ be the transcendence degree 1 function field defined by $y^q+y=x^m+x^{?m}$. Let $t=x^{m(q?1)}$ and $H=\mathbb{K}(t)$. The extension $F|H$ is a non-Galois extension. Let K be the Galois closure of F with respect to H. By Stichtenoth [20], K has genus $\mathfrak{g}(K)=(qm?1)(q?1)$, p-rank (Hasse–Witt invariant) $\gamma (K)={(q?1)}^2$ and a $\mathbb{K}$-automorphism group of order at least $2q^{2}m(q?1)$. In this paper we prove that this subgroup is the full $\mathbb{K}$-automorphism group of K; more precisely ${\text{Aut}}_{\mathbb{K}}(K)=\mathrm{\Delta }?D$ where Δ is an elementary abelian p-group of order $q^2$ and D has an index 2 cyclic subgroup of order $m(q?1)$. In particular, $\sqrt{m}|{\text{Aut}}_{\mathbb{K}}(K)|>\mathfrak{g}{(K)}^{3/2}$, and if K is ordinary (i.e. $\mathfrak{g}(K)=\gamma (K)$) then $|{\text{Aut}}_{\mathbb{K}}(K)|>{\mathfrak{g}}^{3/2}$. On the other hand, if G is a solvable subgroup of the $\mathbb{K}$-automorphism group of an ordinary, transcendence degree 1 function field L of genus $\mathfrak{g}(L)\ge 2$ defined over $\mathbb{K}$, then $|{\text{Aut}}_{\mathbb{K}}(K)|\le 34{(\mathfrak{g}(L)+1)}^{3/2}<68\sqrt{2}\mathfrak{g}{(L)}^{3/2}$; see [15]. This shows that K hits this bound up to the constant $68\sqrt{2}$.Since ${\text{Aut}}_{\mathbb{K}}(K)$ has several subgroups, the fixed subfield $F^N$ of such a subgroup N may happen to have many automorphisms provided that the normalizer of N in ${\text{Aut}}_{\mathbb{K}}(K)$ is large enough. This possibility is worked out for subgroups of Δ.