k-SUM Hardness Implies Treewidth-SETH

Abstract

We show that if k-SUM is hard, in the sense that the standard algorithm is essentially optimal, then a variant of the SETH called the Primal Treewidth SETH is true. Formally: if there is an $\epsilon >0$ and an algorithm which solves SAT in time $(2-\epsilon {)}^{tw}|\ddot{I}•{|}^{O(1)}$, where $tw$ is the width of a given tree decomposition of the primal graph of the input, then there exists a randomized algorithm which solves k-SUM in time $n^{(1-\hat{I}´)\frac{k}{2}}$ for some $\hat{I}´>0$ and all sufficiently large $k$. We also establish an analogous result for the k-XOR problem, where integer addition is replaced by component-wise addition modulo $2$. As an application of our reduction we are able to revisit tight lower bounds on the complexity of several fundamental problems parameterized by treewidth (Independent Set, Max Cut, $k$-Coloring). Our results imply that these bounds, which were initially shown under the SETH, also hold if one assumes the k-SUM or k-XOR Hypotheses, arguably increasing our confidence in their validity.

SODA 2026