2,457 research outputs found
A Fixed Parameter Tractable Approximation Scheme for the Optimal Cut Graph of a Surface
Given a graph cellularly embedded on a surface of genus , a
cut graph is a subgraph of such that cutting along yields a
topological disk. We provide a fixed parameter tractable approximation scheme
for the problem of computing the shortest cut graph, that is, for any
, we show how to compute a approximation of
the shortest cut graph in time .
Our techniques first rely on the computation of a spanner for the problem
using the technique of brick decompositions, to reduce the problem to the case
of bounded tree-width. Then, to solve the bounded tree-width case, we introduce
a variant of the surface-cut decomposition of Ru\'e, Sau and Thilikos, which
may be of independent interest
Vertex Sparsifiers: New Results from Old Techniques
Given a capacitated graph and a set of terminals ,
how should we produce a graph only on the terminals so that every
(multicommodity) flow between the terminals in could be supported in
with low congestion, and vice versa? (Such a graph is called a
flow-sparsifier for .) What if we want to be a "simple" graph? What if
we allow to be a convex combination of simple graphs?
Improving on results of Moitra [FOCS 2009] and Leighton and Moitra [STOC
2010], we give efficient algorithms for constructing: (a) a flow-sparsifier
that maintains congestion up to a factor of , where , (b) a convex combination of trees over the terminals that maintains
congestion up to a factor of , and (c) for a planar graph , a
convex combination of planar graphs that maintains congestion up to a constant
factor. This requires us to give a new algorithm for the 0-extension problem,
the first one in which the preimages of each terminal are connected in .
Moreover, this result extends to minor-closed families of graphs.
Our improved bounds immediately imply improved approximation guarantees for
several terminal-based cut and ordering problems.Comment: An extended abstract appears in the 13th International Workshop on
Approximation Algorithms for Combinatorial Optimization Problems (APPROX),
2010. Final version to appear in SIAM J. Computin
Approximation Algorithms for Connected Maximum Cut and Related Problems
An instance of the Connected Maximum Cut problem consists of an undirected
graph G = (V, E) and the goal is to find a subset of vertices S V
that maximizes the number of edges in the cut \delta(S) such that the induced
graph G[S] is connected. We present the first non-trivial \Omega(1/log n)
approximation algorithm for the connected maximum cut problem in general graphs
using novel techniques. We then extend our algorithm to an edge weighted case
and obtain a poly-logarithmic approximation algorithm. Interestingly, in stark
contrast to the classical max-cut problem, we show that the connected maximum
cut problem remains NP-hard even on unweighted, planar graphs. On the positive
side, we obtain a polynomial time approximation scheme for the connected
maximum cut problem on planar graphs and more generally on graphs with bounded
genus.Comment: 17 pages, Conference version to appear in ESA 201
- ā¦