Parameterized Analysis of the Cops and Robber Game

Pursuit-evasion games have been intensively studied for several decades due to their numerous applications in artificial intelligence, robot motion planning, database theory, distributed computing, and algorithmic theory. Cops and Robber (CnR) is one of the most well-known pursuit-evasion games played on graphs, where multiple cops pursue a single robber. The aim is to compute the cop number of a graph, k, which is the minimum number of cops that ensures the capture of the robber. From the viewpoint of parameterized complexity, CnR is W[2]-hard parameterized by k [Fomin et al., TCS, 2010]. Thus, we study structural parameters of the input graph. We begin with the vertex cover number (vcn). First, we establish that k ? vcn/3+1. Second, we prove that CnR parameterized by vcn is FPT by designing an exponential kernel. We complement this result by showing that it is unlikely for CnR parameterized by vcn to admit a polynomial compression. We extend our exponential kernels to the parameters cluster vertex deletion number and deletion to stars number, and design a linear vertex kernel for neighborhood diversity. Additionally, we extend all of our results to several well-studied variations of CnR

On the Cop Number of String Graphs

Cops and Robber is a well-studied two-player pursuit-evasion game played on a graph, where a group of cops tries to capture the robber. The cop number of a graph is the minimum number of cops required to capture the robber. We show that the cop number of a string graph is at most 13, improving upon a result of Gaven?iak et al. [Eur. J. of Comb. 72, 45-69 (2018)]. Using similar techniques, we also show that four cops have a winning strategy for a variant of Cops and Robber, named Fully Active Cops and Robber, on planar graphs, addressing an open question of Gromovikov et al. [Austr. J. Comb. 76(2), 248-265 (2020)]

Parameterized Complexity of Incomplete Connected Fair Division

Fair division of resources among competing agents is a fundamental problem in computational social choice and economic game theory. It has been intensively studied on various kinds of items (divisible and indivisible) and under various notions of fairness. We focus on Connected Fair Division (CFD), the variant of fair division on graphs, where the resources are modeled as an item graph. Here, each agent has to be assigned a connected subgraph of the item graph, and each item has to be assigned to some agent. We introduce a generalization of CFD, termed Incomplete CFD (ICFD), where exactly p vertices of the item graph should be assigned to the agents. This might be useful, in particular when the allocations are intended to be "economical" as well as fair. We consider four well-known notions of fairness: PROP, EF, EF1, EFX. First, we prove that EF-ICFD, EF1-ICFD, and EFX-ICFD are W[1]-hard parameterized by p plus the number of agents, even for graphs having constant vertex cover number (vcn). In contrast, we present a randomized FPT algorithm for PROP-ICFD parameterized only by p. Additionally, we prove both positive and negative results concerning the kernelization complexity of ICFD under all four fairness notions, parameterized by p, vcn, and the total number of different valuations in the item graph (val)

Further results on the Hunters and Rabbit game through monotonicity

Hunters and Rabbit game is played on a graph $G$ where the Hunter player shoots at $k$ vertices in every round while the Rabbit player occupies an unknown vertex and, if not shot, must move to a neighbouring vertex after each round. The Rabbit player wins if it can ensure that its position is never shot. The Hunter player wins otherwise. The hunter number $h(G)$ of a graph $G$ is the minimum integer $k$ such that the Hunter player has a winning strategy (i.e., allowing him to win whatever be the strategy of the Rabbit player). This game has been studied in several graph classes, in particular in bipartite graphs (grids, trees, hypercubes...), but the computational complexity of computing $h(G)$ remains open in general graphs and even in trees. To progress further, we propose a notion of monotonicity for the Hunters and Rabbit game imposing that, roughly, a vertex that has already been shot ``must not host the rabbit anymore''. This allows us to obtain new results in various graph classes. Let the monotone hunter number be denoted by $mh(G)$. We show that $pw(G) \leq mh(G) \leq pw(G)+1$ for any graph $G$ with pathwidth $pw(G)$, implying that computing $mh(G)$, or even approximating $mh(G)$ up to an additive constant, is NP-hard. Then, we show that $mh(G)$ can be computed in polynomial time in split graphs, interval graphs, cographs and trees. These results go through structural characterisations which allow us to relate the monotone hunter number with the pathwidth in some of these graph classes. In all cases, this allows us to specify the hunter number or to show that there may be an arbitrary gap between $h$ and $mh$, i.e., that monotonicity does not help. In particular, we show that, for every $k\geq 3$, there exists a tree $T$ with $h(T)=2$ and $mh(T)=k$. We conclude by proving that computing $h$ (resp., $mh$) is FPT parameterised by the minimum size of a vertex cover.Comment: A preliminary version appeared in MFCS 2023. Abstract shortened due to Arxiv submission requirement

Romeo and Juliet Is EXPTIME-Complete

Romeo and Juliet is a two player Rendezvous game played on graphs where one player controls two agents, Romeo (ℛ) and Juliet () who aim to meet at a vertex against k adversaries, called dividers, controlled by the other player. The optimization in this game lies at deciding the minimum number of dividers sufficient to restrict ℛ and from meeting in a graph, called the dynamic separation number. We establish that Romeo and Juliet is EXPTIME-complete, settling a conjecture of Fomin, Golovach, and Thilikos [Inf. and Comp., 2023] positively. We also consider the game for directed graphs and establish that although the game is EXPTIME-complete for general directed graphs, it is PSPACE-complete and co-W[2]-hard for directed acyclic graphs

Kernels for the Disjoint Paths Problem on Subclasses of Chordal Graphs

Given an undirected graph G and a multiset of k terminal pairs , the Vertex-Disjoint Paths (VDP) and Edge-Disjoint Paths (EDP) problems ask whether G has k pairwise internally vertex-disjoint paths and k pairwise edge-disjoint paths, respectively, connecting every terminal pair in . In this paper, we study the kernelization complexity of VDP and EDP on subclasses of chordal graphs. For VDP, we design a 4k vertex kernel on split graphs and an (k²) vertex kernel on well-partitioned chordal graphs. We also show that the problem becomes polynomial-time solvable on threshold graphs. For EDP, we first prove that the problem is NP-complete on complete graphs. Then, we design an (k^{2.75}) vertex kernel for EDP on split graphs, and improve it to a 7k+1 vertex kernel on threshold graphs. Lastly, we provide an (k²) vertex kernel for EDP on block graphs and a 2k+1 vertex kernel for clique paths. Our contributions improve upon several results in the literature, as well as resolve an open question by Heggernes et al. [Theory Comput. Syst., 2015]

Recontamination Helps a Lot to Hunt a Rabbit

The Hunters and Rabbit game is played on a graph G where the Hunter player shoots at k vertices in every round while the Rabbit player occupies an unknown vertex and, if it is not shot, must move to a neighbouring vertex after each round. The Rabbit player wins if it can ensure that its position is never shot. The Hunter player wins otherwise. The hunter number h(G) of a graph G is the minimum integer k such that the Hunter player has a winning strategy (i.e., allowing him to win whatever be the strategy of the Rabbit player). This game has been studied in several graph classes, in particular in bipartite graphs (grids, trees, hypercubes...), but the computational complexity of computing h(G) remains open in general graphs and even in more restricted graph classes such as trees. To progress further in this study, we propose a notion of monotonicity (a well-studied and useful property in classical pursuit-evasion games such as Graph Searching games) for the Hunters and Rabbit game imposing that, roughly, a vertex that has already been shot "must not host the rabbit anymore". This allows us to obtain new results in various graph classes. More precisely, let the monotone hunter number mh(G) of a graph G be the minimum integer k such that the Hunter player has a monotone winning strategy. We show that pw(G) ? mh(G) ? pw(G)+1 for any graph G with pathwidth pw(G), which implies that computing mh(G), or even approximating mh(G) up to an additive constant, is NP-hard. Then, we show that mh(G) can be computed in polynomial time in split graphs, interval graphs, cographs and trees. These results go through structural characterisations which allow us to relate the monotone hunter number with the pathwidth in some of these graph classes. In all cases, this allows us to specify the hunter number or to show that there may be an arbitrary gap between h and mh, i.e., that monotonicity does not help. In particular, we show that, for every k ? 3, there exists a tree T with h(T) = 2 and mh(T) = k. We conclude by proving that computing h (resp., mh) is FPT parameterised by the minimum size of a vertex cover

Algorithms and Complexity for Geodetic Sets on Planar and Chordal Graphs

We study the complexity of finding the geodetic number on subclasses of planar graphs and chordal graphs. A set S of vertices of a graph G is a geodetic set if every vertex of G lies in a shortest path between some pair of vertices of S. The Minimum Geodetic Set (MGS) problem is to find a geodetic set with minimum cardinality of a given graph. The problem is known to remain NP-hard on bipartite graphs, chordal graphs, planar graphs and subcubic graphs. We first study MGS on restricted classes of planar graphs: we design a linear-time algorithm for MGS on solid grids, improving on a 3-approximation algorithm by Chakraborty et al. (CALDAM, 2020) and show that MGS remains NP-hard even for subcubic partial grids of arbitrary girth. This unifies some results in the literature. We then turn our attention to chordal graphs, showing that MGS is fixed parameter tractable for inputs of this class when parameterized by their treewidth (which equals the clique number minus one). This implies a linear-time algorithm for k-trees, for fixed k. Then, we show that MGS is NP-hard on interval graphs, thereby answering a question of Ekim et al. (LATIN, 2012). As interval graphs are very constrained, to prove the latter result we design a rather sophisticated reduction technique to work around their inherent linear structure

Complexity and Algorithms for ISOMETRIC PATH COVER on Chordal Graphs and Beyond

A path is isometric if it is a shortest path between its endpoints. In this article, we consider the graph covering problem Isometric Path Cover, where we want to cover all the vertices of the graph using a minimum-size set of isometric paths. Although this problem has been considered from a structural point of view (in particular, regarding applications to pursuit-evasion games), it is little studied from the algorithmic perspective. We consider Isometric Path Cover on chordal graphs, and show that the problem is NP-hard for this class. On the positive side, for chordal graphs, we design a 4-approximation algorithm and an FPT algorithm for the parameter solution size. The approximation algorithm is based on a reduction to the classic path covering problem on a suitable directed acyclic graph obtained from a breadth first search traversal of the graph. The approximation ratio of our algorithm is 3 for interval graphs and 2 for proper interval graphs. Moreover, we extend the analysis of our approximation algorithm to k-chordal graphs (graphs whose induced cycles have length at most k) by showing that it has an approximation ratio of k+7 for such graphs, and to graphs of treelength at most ?, where the approximation ratio is at most 6?+2

On the Cop Number of String Graphs

Cops and Robber is a well-studied two-player pursuit-evasion game played on a graph, where a group of cops tries to capture the robber. The \emph{cop number} of a graph is the minimum number of cops required to capture the robber. Gaven\v{c}iak et al.~[Eur. J. of Comb. 72, 45--69 (2018)] studied the game on intersection graphs and established that the cop number for the class of string graphs is at most 15, and asked as an open question to improve this bound for string graphs and subclasses of string graphs. We address this question and establish that the cop number of a string graph is at most 13. To this end, we develop a novel \textit{guarding} technique. We further establish that this technique can be useful for other Cops and Robber games on graphs admitting a representation. In particular, we show that four cops have a winning strategy for a variant of Cops and Robber, named Fully Active Cops and Robber, on planar graphs, addressing an open question of Gromovikov et al.~[Austr. J. Comb. 76(2), 248--265 (2020)]. In passing, we also improve the known bounds on the cop number of boxicity 2 graphs.Comment: A preliminary version appeared in ISAAC 202