This critique uncovers flaws in Deng's proof for P=NP, focusing on 3-coloring and semidefinite programs.
In this paper, we critically examine Deng's "P=NP" [Den24]. The paper claims that there is a polynomial-time algorithm that decides 3-coloring for graphs with vertices of degree at most 4, which is known to be an NP-complete problem. Deng presents a semidefinite program with an objective function that is unboundedly negative if the graph is not 3-colorable, and a minimum of 0 if the graph is 3-colorable. Through detailed analysis, we find that Deng conflates subgraphs with induced subgraphs, leading to a critical error which thereby invalidates Deng's proof that P=NP.
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Humphreys et al. (2025) studied this question.
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