Streaming Max-Cut in General Metrics

Abstract: Max-Cut is a fundamental combinatorial optimization problem that has been studied in various computational settings. In this work, we initiate the study of its streaming complexity in general metric spaces with access to distance oracles. We give a $(1 + \epsilon)$-approximation algorithm for estimating the Max-Cut value sliding-window streams using only poly-logarithmic space. This is the first sliding-window algorithm for Max-Cut even in Euclidean spaces, and it achieves a similar error-space tradeoff as the state-of-the-art insertion-only algorithms in Euclidean settings [Chen, Jiang, Krauthgamer, STOC'23], but without relying on Euclidean structures. In sharp contrast, we prove a polynomial-space lower bound for any $\mathrm{poly}(n)$-approximation in the dynamic streaming setting. This yields a separation from the Euclidean case, where the polylogarithmic-space $(1+\epsilon)$-approximation extends to dynamic streams. On the technical side, our sliding-window algorithm builds on the smooth histogram framework of [Braverman and Ostrovsky, SICOMP'10]. To make this framework applicable, we establish the first smoothness bound for metric Max-Cut. Moreover, we develop a streaming algorithm for metric Max-Cut in insertion-only streams, whose key ingredient is a new metric reservoir sampling technique.