Algebraic Approach to Approximation

Following the success of the so-called algebraic approach to the study of decision constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs), exact optimization of valued CSPs, and most recently promise CSPs, we propose an algebraic framework for valued promise CSPs. To every valued promise CSP we associate an algebraic object, its so-called valued minion. Our main result shows that the existence of a homomorphism between the associated valued minions implies a polynomial-time reduction between the original CSPs. We also show that this general reduction theorem includes important inapproximability results, for instance, the inapproximability of almost solvable systems of linear equations beyond the random assignment threshold.