On Spanning Galaxies in Digraphs

International audienceIn a directed graph, a star is an arborescence with at least one arc, in which the root dominates all the other vertices. A galaxy is a vertex-disjoint union of stars. In this paper, we consider the Spanning Galaxy problem of deciding whether a digraph D has a spanning galaxy or not. We show that although this problem is NP-complete (even when restricted to acyclic digraphs), it becomes polynomial-time solvable when restricted to strong digraphs. In fact, we prove that restricted to this class, the \pb\ is equivalent to the problem of deciding if a strong digraph has a strong digraph with an even number of vertices. We then show a polynomial-time algorithm to solve this problem. We also consider some parameterized version of the Spanning Galaxy problem. Finally, we improve some results concerning the notion of directed star arboricity of a digraph D, which is the minimum number of galaxies needed to cover all the arcs of D. We show in particular that dst(D)\leq \Delta(D)+1 for every digraph D and that dst(D)\leq\Delta(D) for every acyclic digraph D

Precedence-Constrained Arborescences

The minimum-cost arborescence problem is a well-studied problem in the area of graph theory, with known polynomial-time algorithms for solving it. Previous literature introduced new variations on the original problem with different objective function and/or constraints. Recently, the Precedence-Constrained Minimum-Cost Arborescence problem was proposed, in which precedence constraints are enforced on pairs of vertices. These constraints prevent the formation of directed paths that violate precedence relationships along the tree. We show that this problem is NP-hard, and we introduce a new scalable mixed integer linear programming model for it. With respect to the previous models, the newly proposed model performs substantially better. This work also introduces a new variation on the minimum-cost arborescence problem with precedence constraints. We show that this new variation is also NP-hard, and we propose several mixed integer linear programming models for formulating the problem

Approximation Algorithms for Flexible Graph Connectivity

We present approximation algorithms for several network design problems in the model of Flexible Graph Connectivity (Adjiashvili, Hommelsheim and M\"uhlenthaler, "Flexible Graph Connectivity", Math. Program. pp. 1-33 (2021), and IPCO 2020: pp. 13-26). Let $k\geq 1$, $p\geq 1$ and $q\geq 0$ be integers. In an instance of the $(p,q)$-Flexible Graph Connectivity problem, denoted $(p,q)$-FGC, we have an undirected connected graph $G = (V,E)$, a partition of $E$ into a set of safe edges $S$ and a set of unsafe edges $U$, and nonnegative costs $c: E\to\Re$ on the edges. A subset $F \subseteq E$ of edges is feasible for the $(p,q)$-FGC problem if for any subset $F'$ of unsafe edges with $|F'|\leq q$, the subgraph $(V, F \setminus F')$ is $p$-edge connected. The algorithmic goal is to find a feasible solution $F$ that minimizes $c(F) = \sum_{e \in F} c_e$. We present a simple $2$-approximation algorithm for the $(1,1)$-FGC problem via a reduction to the minimum-cost rooted $2$-arborescence problem. This improves on the $2.527$-approximation algorithm of Adjiashvili et al. Our $2$-approximation algorithm for the $(1,1)$-FGC problem extends to a $(k+1)$-approximation algorithm for the $(1,k)$-FGC problem. We present a $4$-approximation algorithm for the $(p,1)$-FGC problem, and an $O(q\log|V|)$-approximation algorithm for the $(p,q)$-FGC problem. Finally, we improve on the result of Adjiashvili et al. for the unweighted $(1,1)$-FGC problem by presenting a $16/11$-approximation algorithm. The $(p,q)$-FGC problem is related to the well-known Capacitated $k$-Connected Subgraph problem (denoted Cap-k-ECSS) that arises in the area of Capacitated Network Design. We give a $\min(k,2 u_{max})$-approximation algorithm for the Cap-k-ECSS problem, where $u_{max}$ denotes the maximum capacity of an edge.Comment: 23 pages, 1 figure, preliminary version in the Proceedings of the 41st IARCS Annual Conference on Foundations of Software Technology and Theoretical Computer Science (FSTTCS 2021), December 15-17, (LIPIcs, Volume 213, Article No. 9, pp. 9:1-9:14), see https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.FSTTCS.2021.9. Related manuscript: arXiv:2102.0330

Parameterized Approximation Schemes for Steiner Trees with Small Number of Steiner Vertices

We study the Steiner Tree problem, in which a set of terminal vertices needs to be connected in the cheapest possible way in an edge-weighted graph. This problem has been extensively studied from the viewpoint of approximation and also parametrization. In particular, on one hand Steiner Tree is known to be APX-hard, and W[2]-hard on the other, if parameterized by the number of non-terminals (Steiner vertices) in the optimum solution. In contrast to this we give an efficient parameterized approximation scheme (EPAS), which circumvents both hardness results. Moreover, our methods imply the existence of a polynomial size approximate kernelization scheme (PSAKS) for the considered parameter. We further study the parameterized approximability of other variants of Steiner Tree, such as Directed Steiner Tree and Steiner Forest. For neither of these an EPAS is likely to exist for the studied parameter: for Steiner Forest an easy observation shows that the problem is APX-hard, even if the input graph contains no Steiner vertices. For Directed Steiner Tree we prove that approximating within any function of the studied parameter is W[1]-hard. Nevertheless, we show that an EPAS exists for Unweighted Directed Steiner Tree, but a PSAKS does not. We also prove that there is an EPAS and a PSAKS for Steiner Forest if in addition to the number of Steiner vertices, the number of connected components of an optimal solution is considered to be a parameter.Comment: 23 pages, 6 figures An extended abstract appeared in proceedings of STACS 201

A Study of Arc Strong Connectivity of Digraphs

My dissertation research was motivated by Matula and his study of a quantity he called the strength of a graph G, kappa\u27( G) = max{lcub}kappa\u27(H) : H G{rcub}. (Abstract shortened by ProQuest.)