Planted Models for the Densest k-Subgraph Problem

Given an undirected graph G, the Densest k-subgraph problem (DkS) asks to compute a set S ? V of cardinality |S| ? k such that the weight of edges inside S is maximized. This is a fundamental NP-hard problem whose approximability, inspite of many decades of research, is yet to be settled. The current best known approximation algorithm due to Bhaskara et al. (2010) computes a ?(n^{1/4 + ?}) approximation in time n^{?(1/?)}, for any ? > 0. We ask what are some "easier" instances of this problem? We propose some natural semi-random models of instances with a planted dense subgraph, and study approximation algorithms for computing the densest subgraph in them. These models are inspired by the semi-random models of instances studied for various other graph problems such as the independent set problem, graph partitioning problems etc. For a large range of parameters of these models, we get significantly better approximation factors for the Densest k-subgraph problem. Moreover, our algorithm recovers a large part of the planted solution

Parameterized Complexity of Safety of Threshold Automata

Threshold automata are a formalism for modeling fault-tolerant distributed algorithms. In this paper, we study the parameterized complexity of reachability of threshold automata. As a first result, we show that the problem becomes W[1]-hard even when parameterized by parameters which are quite small in practice. We then consider two restricted cases which arise in practice and provide fixed-parameter tractable algorithms for both these cases. Finally, we report on experimental results conducted on some protocols taken from the literature

Space-Efficient Algorithms for Reachability in Directed Geometric Graphs

The problem of graph Reachability is to decide whether there is a path from one vertex to another in a given graph. In this paper, we study the Reachability problem on three distinct graph families - intersection graphs of Jordan regions, unit contact disk graphs (penny graphs), and chordal graphs. For each of these graph families, we present space-efficient algorithms for the Reachability problem. For intersection graphs of Jordan regions, we show how to obtain a "good" vertex separator in a space-efficient manner and use it to solve the Reachability in polynomial time and O(m^{1/2} log n) space, where n is the number of Jordan regions, and m is the total number of crossings among the regions. We use a similar approach for chordal graphs and obtain a polynomial time and O(m^{1/2} log n) space algorithm, where n and m are the number of vertices and edges, respectively. However, for unit contact disk graphs (penny graphs), we use a more involved technique and obtain a better algorithm. We show that for every ? > 0, there exists a polynomial time algorithm that can solve Reachability in an n vertex directed penny graph, using O(n^{1/4+?}) space. We note that the method used to solve penny graphs does not extend naturally to the class of geometric intersection graphs that include arbitrary size cliques

Safety Verification of Parameterized Systems under Release-Acquire

We study the safety verification problem for parameterized systems under the release-acquire (RA) semantics. It has been shown that the problem is intractable for systems with unlimited access to atomic compare-and-swap (CAS) instructions. We show that, from a verification perspective where approximate results help, this is overly pessimistic. We study parameterized systems consisting of an unbounded number of environment threads executing identical but CAS-free programs and a fixed number of distinguished threads that are unrestricted. Our first contribution is a new semantics that considerably simplifies RA but is still equivalent for the above systems as far as safety verification is concerned. We apply this (general) result to two subclasses of our model. We show that safety verification is only \pspace-complete for the bounded model checking problem where the distinguished threads are loop-free. Interestingly, we can still afford the unbounded environment. We show that the complexity jumps to \nexp-complete for thread-modular verification where an unrestricted distinguished `ego' thread interacts with an environment of CAS-free threads plus loop-free distinguished threads (as in the earlier setting). Besides the usefulness for verification, the results are strong in that they delineate the tractability border for an established semantics

Parikh Automata on Infinite Words

Parikh automata on finite words were first introduced by Klaedtke and Rue{\ss} [Automata, Languages and Programming, 2003]. In this paper, we introduce several variants of Parikh automata on infinite words and study their expressiveness. We show that one of our new models is equivalent to synchronous blind counter machines introduced by Fernau and Stiebe [Fundamenta Informaticae, 2008]. All our models admit {\epsilon}-elimination, which to the best of our knowledge is an open question for blind counter automata. We then study the classical decision problems of the new automata models

Programming Languages and Systems

This open access book constitutes the proceedings of the 30th European Symposium on Programming, ESOP 2021, which was held during March 27 until April 1, 2021, as part of the European Joint Conferences on Theory and Practice of Software, ETAPS 2021. The conference was planned to take place in Luxembourg and changed to an online format due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The 24 papers included in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 79 submissions. They deal with fundamental issues in the specification, design, analysis, and implementation of programming languages and systems