Almost Polynomial Factor Inapproximability for Parameterized k-Clique

The k-Clique problem is a canonical hard problem in parameterized complexity. In this paper, we study the parameterized complexity of approximating the k-Clique problem where an integer k and a graph G on n vertices are given as input, and the goal is to find a clique of size at least k/F(k) whenever the graph G has a clique of size k. When such an algorithm runs in time T(k)·poly(n) (i.e., FPT-time) for some computable function T, it is said to be an F(k)-FPT-approximation algorithm for the k-Clique problem. Although, the non-existence of an F(k)-FPT-approximation algorithm for any computable sublinear function F is known under gap-ETH [Chalermsook et al., FOCS 2017], it has remained a long standing open problem to prove the same inapproximability result under the more standard and weaker assumption, W[1]≠FPT. In a recent breakthrough, Lin [STOC 2021] ruled out constant factor (i.e., F(k) = O(1)) FPT-approximation algorithms under W[1]≠FPT. In this paper, we improve this inapproximability result (under the same assumption) to rule out every F(k) = k¹/H(k⁾ factor FPT-approximation algorithm for any increasing computable function H (for example H(k) = log^∗ k). Our main technical contribution is introducing list decoding of Hadamard codes over large prime fields into the proof framework of Lin.