4 research outputs found
Counting Shortest Two Disjoint Paths in Cubic Planar Graphs with an NC Algorithm
Given an undirected graph and two disjoint vertex pairs and
, the Shortest two disjoint paths problem (S2DP) asks for the minimum
total length of two vertex disjoint paths connecting with , and
with , respectively.
We show that for cubic planar graphs there are NC algorithms, uniform
circuits of polynomial size and polylogarithmic depth, that compute the S2DP
and moreover also output the number of such minimum length path pairs.
Previously, to the best of our knowledge, no deterministic polynomial time
algorithm was known for S2DP in cubic planar graphs with arbitrary placement of
the terminals. In contrast, the randomized polynomial time algorithm by
Bj\"orklund and Husfeldt, ICALP 2014, for general graphs is much slower, is
serial in nature, and cannot count the solutions.
Our results are built on an approach by Hirai and Namba, Algorithmica 2017,
for a generalisation of S2DP, and fast algorithms for counting perfect
matchings in planar graphs
Shortest disjoint paths on a grid
The well-known k-disjoint paths problem involves finding pairwise vertex-disjoint paths between k specified pairs of vertices within a given graph if they exist. In the shortest k-disjoint paths problem one looks for such paths of minimum total length. Despite nearly 50 years of active research on the k-disjoint paths problem, many open problems and complexity gaps still persist. A particularly well-defined scenario, inspired by VLSI design, focuses on infinite rectangular grids where the terminals are placed at arbitrary grid points. While the decision problem in this context remains NP-hard, no prior research has provided any positive results for the optimization version. The main result of this paper is a fixed-parameter tractable (FPT) algorithm for this scenario. It is important to stress that this is the first result achieving the FPT complexity of the shortest disjoint paths problem in any, even very restricted classes of graphs where we do not put any restriction on the placements of the terminals