On the Fine-Grained Complexity of Small-Size Geometric Set Cover and Discrete k-Center for Small k

We study the time complexity of the discrete k-center problem and related (exact) geometric set cover problems when k or the size of the cover is small. We obtain a plethora of new results: - We give the first subquadratic algorithm for rectilinear discrete 3-center in 2D, running in O?(n^{3/2}) time. - We prove a lower bound of ?(n^{4/3-?}) for rectilinear discrete 3-center in 4D, for any constant ? > 0, under a standard hypothesis about triangle detection in sparse graphs. - Given n points and n weighted axis-aligned unit squares in 2D, we give the first subquadratic algorithm for finding a minimum-weight cover of the points by 3 unit squares, running in O?(n^{8/5}) time. We also prove a lower bound of ?(n^{3/2-?}) for the same problem in 2D, under the well-known APSP Hypothesis. For arbitrary axis-aligned rectangles in 2D, our upper bound is O?(n^{7/4}). - We prove a lower bound of ?(n^{2-?}) for Euclidean discrete 2-center in 13D, under the Hyperclique Hypothesis. This lower bound nearly matches the straightforward upper bound of O?(n^?), if the matrix multiplication exponent ? is equal to 2. - We similarly prove an ?(n^{k-?}) lower bound for Euclidean discrete k-center in O(k) dimensions for any constant k ? 3, under the Hyperclique Hypothesis. This lower bound again nearly matches known upper bounds if ? = 2. - We also prove an ?(n^{2-?}) lower bound for the problem of finding 2 boxes to cover the largest number of points, given n points and n boxes in 12D . This matches the straightforward near-quadratic upper bound