2,260 research outputs found
Parameterization Above a Multiplicative Guarantee
Parameterization above a guarantee is a successful paradigm in Parameterized Complexity. To the best of our knowledge, all fixed-parameter tractable problems in this paradigm share an additive form defined as follows. Given an instance (I,k) of some (parameterized) problem ? with a guarantee g(I), decide whether I admits a solution of size at least (at most) k+g(I). Here, g(I) is usually a lower bound (resp. upper bound) on the maximum (resp. minimum) size of a solution. Since its introduction in 1999 for Max SAT and Max Cut (with g(I) being half the number of clauses and half the number of edges, respectively, in the input), analysis of parameterization above a guarantee has become a very active and fruitful topic of research.
We highlight a multiplicative form of parameterization above a guarantee: Given an instance (I,k) of some (parameterized) problem ? with a guarantee g(I), decide whether I admits a solution of size at least (resp. at most) k ? g(I). In particular, we study the Long Cycle problem with a multiplicative parameterization above the girth g(I) of the input graph, and provide a parameterized algorithm for this problem. Apart from being of independent interest, this exemplifies how parameterization above a multiplicative guarantee can arise naturally. We also show that, for any fixed constant ?>0, multiplicative parameterization above g(I)^(1+?) of Long Cycle yields para-NP-hardness, thus our parameterization is tight in this sense. We complement our main result with the design (or refutation of the existence) of algorithms for other problems parameterized multiplicatively above girth
Lower Bounds for the Graph Homomorphism Problem
The graph homomorphism problem (HOM) asks whether the vertices of a given
-vertex graph can be mapped to the vertices of a given -vertex graph
such that each edge of is mapped to an edge of . The problem
generalizes the graph coloring problem and at the same time can be viewed as a
special case of the -CSP problem. In this paper, we prove several lower
bound for HOM under the Exponential Time Hypothesis (ETH) assumption. The main
result is a lower bound .
This rules out the existence of a single-exponential algorithm and shows that
the trivial upper bound is almost asymptotically
tight.
We also investigate what properties of graphs and make it difficult
to solve HOM. An easy observation is that an upper
bound can be improved to where
is the minimum size of a vertex cover of . The second
lower bound shows that the upper bound is
asymptotically tight. As to the properties of the "right-hand side" graph ,
it is known that HOM can be solved in time and
where is the maximum degree of
and is the treewidth of . This gives
single-exponential algorithms for graphs of bounded maximum degree or bounded
treewidth. Since the chromatic number does not exceed
and , it is natural to ask whether similar
upper bounds with respect to can be obtained. We provide a negative
answer to this question by establishing a lower bound for any
function . We also observe that similar lower bounds can be obtained for
locally injective homomorphisms.Comment: 19 page
Parameterized Edge Hamiltonicity
We study the parameterized complexity of the classical Edge Hamiltonian Path
problem and give several fixed-parameter tractability results. First, we settle
an open question of Demaine et al. by showing that Edge Hamiltonian Path is FPT
parameterized by vertex cover, and that it also admits a cubic kernel. We then
show fixed-parameter tractability even for a generalization of the problem to
arbitrary hypergraphs, parameterized by the size of a (supplied) hitting set.
We also consider the problem parameterized by treewidth or clique-width.
Surprisingly, we show that the problem is FPT for both of these standard
parameters, in contrast to its vertex version, which is W-hard for
clique-width. Our technique, which may be of independent interest, relies on a
structural characterization of clique-width in terms of treewidth and complete
bipartite subgraphs due to Gurski and Wanke
Vertex Cover Kernelization Revisited: Upper and Lower Bounds for a Refined Parameter
An important result in the study of polynomial-time preprocessing shows that
there is an algorithm which given an instance (G,k) of Vertex Cover outputs an
equivalent instance (G',k') in polynomial time with the guarantee that G' has
at most 2k' vertices (and thus O((k')^2) edges) with k' <= k. Using the
terminology of parameterized complexity we say that k-Vertex Cover has a kernel
with 2k vertices. There is complexity-theoretic evidence that both 2k vertices
and Theta(k^2) edges are optimal for the kernel size. In this paper we consider
the Vertex Cover problem with a different parameter, the size fvs(G) of a
minimum feedback vertex set for G. This refined parameter is structurally
smaller than the parameter k associated to the vertex covering number vc(G)
since fvs(G) <= vc(G) and the difference can be arbitrarily large. We give a
kernel for Vertex Cover with a number of vertices that is cubic in fvs(G): an
instance (G,X,k) of Vertex Cover, where X is a feedback vertex set for G, can
be transformed in polynomial time into an equivalent instance (G',X',k') such
that |V(G')| <= 2k and |V(G')| <= O(|X'|^3). A similar result holds when the
feedback vertex set X is not given along with the input. In sharp contrast we
show that the Weighted Vertex Cover problem does not have a polynomial kernel
when parameterized by the cardinality of a given vertex cover of the graph
unless NP is in coNP/poly and the polynomial hierarchy collapses to the third
level.Comment: Published in "Theory of Computing Systems" as an Open Access
publicatio
Approximation Algorithms for the Capacitated Domination Problem
We consider the {\em Capacitated Domination} problem, which models a
service-requirement assignment scenario and is also a generalization of the
well-known {\em Dominating Set} problem. In this problem, given a graph with
three parameters defined on each vertex, namely cost, capacity, and demand, we
want to find an assignment of demands to vertices of least cost such that the
demand of each vertex is satisfied subject to the capacity constraint of each
vertex providing the service. In terms of polynomial time approximations, we
present logarithmic approximation algorithms with respect to different demand
assignment models for this problem on general graphs, which also establishes
the corresponding approximation results to the well-known approximations of the
traditional {\em Dominating Set} problem. Together with our previous work, this
closes the problem of generally approximating the optimal solution. On the
other hand, from the perspective of parameterization, we prove that this
problem is {\it W[1]}-hard when parameterized by a structure of the graph
called treewidth. Based on this hardness result, we present exact
fixed-parameter tractable algorithms when parameterized by treewidth and
maximum capacity of the vertices. This algorithm is further extended to obtain
pseudo-polynomial time approximation schemes for planar graphs
Exploiting -Closure in Kernelization Algorithms for Graph Problems
A graph is c-closed if every pair of vertices with at least c common
neighbors is adjacent. The c-closure of a graph G is the smallest number such
that G is c-closed. Fox et al. [ICALP '18] defined c-closure and investigated
it in the context of clique enumeration. We show that c-closure can be applied
in kernelization algorithms for several classic graph problems. We show that
Dominating Set admits a kernel of size k^O(c), that Induced Matching admits a
kernel with O(c^7*k^8) vertices, and that Irredundant Set admits a kernel with
O(c^(5/2)*k^3) vertices. Our kernelization exploits the fact that c-closed
graphs have polynomially-bounded Ramsey numbers, as we show
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