Detecting Cliques in CONGEST Networks

The problem of detecting network structures plays a central role in distributed computing. One of the fundamental problems studied in this area is to determine whether for a given graph H, the input network contains a subgraph isomorphic to H or not. We investigate this problem for H being a clique K_l in the classical distributed CONGEST model, where the communication topology is the same as the topology of the underlying network, and with limited communication bandwidth on the links. Our first and main result is a lower bound, showing that detecting K_l requires Omega(sqrt{n} / b) communication rounds, for every 4 = sqrt{n}, where b is the bandwidth of the communication links. This result is obtained by using a reduction to the set disjointness problem in the framework of two-party communication complexity. We complement our lower bound with a two-party communication protocol for listing all cliques in the input graph, which up to constant factors communicates the same number of bits as our lower bound for K_4 detection. This demonstrates that our lower bound cannot be improved using the two-party communication framework

Sublinear-Time Distributed Algorithms for Detecting Small Cliques and Even Cycles

In this paper we give sublinear-time distributed algorithms in the CONGEST model for subgraph detection for two classes of graphs: cliques and even-length cycles. We show for the first time that all copies of 4-cliques and 5-cliques in the network graph can be listed in sublinear time, O(n^{5/6+o(1)}) rounds and O(n^{21/22+o(1)}) rounds, respectively. Prior to our work, it was not known whether it was possible to even check if the network contains a 4-clique or a 5-clique in sublinear time. For even-length cycles, C_{2k}, we give an improved sublinear-time algorithm, which exploits a new connection to extremal combinatorics. For example, for 6-cycles we improve the running time from O~(n^{5/6}) to O~(n^{3/4}) rounds. We also show two obstacles on proving lower bounds for C_{2k}-freeness: First, we use the new connection to extremal combinatorics to show that the current lower bound of Omega~(sqrt{n}) rounds for 6-cycle freeness cannot be improved using partition-based reductions from 2-party communication complexity, the technique by which all known lower bounds on subgraph detection have been proven to date. Second, we show that there is some fixed constant delta in (0,1/2) such that for any k, a Omega(n^{1/2+delta}) lower bound on C_{2k}-freeness implies new lower bounds in circuit complexity. For general subgraphs, it was shown in [Orr Fischer et al., 2018] that for any fixed k, there exists a subgraph H of size k such that H-freeness requires Omega~(n^{2-Theta(1/k)}) rounds. It was left as an open problem whether this is tight, or whether some constant-sized subgraph requires truly quadratic time to detect. We show that in fact, for any subgraph H of constant size k, the H-freeness problem can be solved in O(n^{2 - Theta(1/k)}) rounds, nearly matching the lower bound of [Orr Fischer et al., 2018]

Distributed Testing of Excluded Subgraphs

We study property testing in the context of distributed computing, under the classical CONGEST model. It is known that testing whether a graph is triangle-free can be done in a constant number of rounds, where the constant depends on how far the input graph is from being triangle-free. We show that, for every connected 4-node graph H, testing whether a graph is H-free can be done in a constant number of rounds too. The constant also depends on how far the input graph is from being H-free, and the dependence is identical to the one in the case of testing triangles. Hence, in particular, testing whether a graph is K_4-free, and testing whether a graph is C_4-free can be done in a constant number of rounds (where K_k denotes the k-node clique, and C_k denotes the k-node cycle). On the other hand, we show that testing K_k-freeness and C_k-freeness for k>4 appear to be much harder. Specifically, we investigate two natural types of generic algorithms for testing H-freeness, called DFS tester and BFS tester. The latter captures the previously known algorithm to test the presence of triangles, while the former captures our generic algorithm to test the presence of a 4-node graph pattern H. We prove that both DFS and BFS testers fail to test K_k-freeness and C_k-freeness in a constant number of rounds for k>4

Distributed Detection of Cycles

Distributed property testing in networks has been introduced by Brakerski and Patt-Shamir (2011), with the objective of detecting the presence of large dense sub-networks in a distributed manner. Recently, Censor-Hillel et al. (2016) have shown how to detect 3-cycles in a constant number of rounds by a distributed algorithm. In a follow up work, Fraigniaud et al. (2016) have shown how to detect 4-cycles in a constant number of rounds as well. However, the techniques in these latter works were shown not to generalize to larger cycles $C_k$ with $k\geq 5$. In this paper, we completely settle the problem of cycle detection, by establishing the following result. For every $k\geq 3$, there exists a distributed property testing algorithm for $C_k$-freeness, performing in a constant number of rounds. All these results hold in the classical CONGEST model for distributed network computing. Our algorithm is 1-sided error. Its round-complexity is $O(1/\epsilon)$ where $\epsilon\in(0,1)$ is the property testing parameter measuring the gap between legal and illegal instances

Lower Bounds for Induced Cycle Detection in Distributed Computing

The distributed subgraph detection asks, for a fixed graph H, whether the n-node input graph contains H as a subgraph or not. In the standard CONGEST model of distributed computing, the complexity of clique/cycle detection and listing has received a lot of attention recently. In this paper we consider the induced variant of subgraph detection, where the goal is to decide whether the n-node input graph contains H as an induced subgraph or not. We first show a ??(n) lower bound for detecting the existence of an induced k-cycle for any k ? 4 in the CONGEST model. This lower bound is tight for k = 4, and shows that the induced variant of k-cycle detection is much harder than the non-induced version. This lower bound is proved via a reduction from two-party communication complexity. We complement this result by showing that for 5 ? k ? 7, this ??(n) lower bound cannot be improved via the two-party communication framework. We then show how to prove stronger lower bounds for larger values of k. More precisely, we show that detecting an induced k-cycle for any k ? 8 requires ??(n^{2-?{(1/k)}}) rounds in the CONGEST model, nearly matching the known upper bound O?(n^{2-?{(1/k)}}) of the general k-node subgraph detection (which also applies to the induced version) by Eden, Fiat, Fischer, Kuhn, and Oshman [DISC 2019]. Finally, we investigate the case where H is the diamond (the diamond is obtained by adding an edge to a 4-cycle, or equivalently removing an edge from a 4-clique), and show non-trivial upper and lower bounds on the complexity of the induced version of diamond detecting and listing

Quantum Distributed Algorithms for Detection of Cliques

The possibilities offered by quantum computing have drawn attention in the distributed computing community recently, with several breakthrough results showing quantum distributed algorithms that run faster than the fastest known classical counterparts, and even separations between the two models. A prime example is the result by Izumi, Le Gall, and Magniez [STACS 2020], who showed that triangle detection by quantum distributed algorithms is easier than triangle listing, while an analogous result is not known in the classical case. In this paper we present a framework for fast quantum distributed clique detection. This improves upon the state-of-the-art for the triangle case, and is also more general, applying to larger clique sizes. Our main technical contribution is a new approach for detecting cliques by encapsulating this as a search task for nodes that can be added to smaller cliques. To extract the best complexities out of our approach, we develop a framework for nested distributed quantum searches, which employ checking procedures that are quantum themselves. Moreover, we show a circuit-complexity barrier on proving a lower bound of the form ?(n^{3/5+?}) for K_p-detection for any p ? 4, even in the classical (non-quantum) distributed CONGEST setting

Beyond Distributed Subgraph Detection: Induced Subgraphs, Multicolored Problems and Graph Parameters

Subgraph detection has recently been one of the most studied problems in the CONGEST model of distributed computing. In this work, we study the distributed complexity of problems closely related to subgraph detection, mainly focusing on induced subgraph detection. The main line of this work presents lower bounds and parameterized algorithms w.r.t structural parameters of the input graph: - On general graphs, we give unconditional lower bounds for induced detection of cycles and patterns of treewidth 2 in CONGEST. Moreover, by adapting reductions from centralized parameterized complexity, we prove lower bounds in CONGEST for detecting patterns with a 4-clique, and for induced path detection conditional on the hardness of triangle detection in the congested clique. - On graphs of bounded degeneracy, we show that induced paths can be detected fast in CONGEST using techniques from parameterized algorithms, while detecting cycles and patterns of treewidth 2 is hard. - On graphs of bounded vertex cover number, we show that induced subgraph detection is easy in CONGEST for any pattern graph. More specifically, we adapt a centralized parameterized algorithm for a more general maximum common induced subgraph detection problem to the distributed setting. In addition to these induced subgraph detection results, we study various related problems in the CONGEST and congested clique models, including for multicolored versions of subgraph-detection-like problems

A Note on Improved Results for One Round Distributed Clique Listing

In this note, we investigate listing cliques of arbitrary sizes in bandwidth-limited, dynamic networks. The problem of detecting and listing triangles and cliques was originally studied in great detail by Bonne and Censor-Hillel (ICALP 2019). We extend this study to dynamic graphs where more than one update may occur as well as resolve an open question posed by Bonne and Censor-Hillel (2019). Our algorithms and results are based on some simple observations about listing triangles under various settings and we show that we can list larger cliques using such facts. Specifically, we show that our techniques can be used to solve an open problem posed in the original paper: we show that detecting and listing cliques (of any size) can be done using $O(1)$-bandwidth after one round of communication under node insertions and node/edge deletions. We conclude with an extension of our techniques to obtain a small bandwidth $1$-round algorithm for listing cliques when more than one node insertion/deletion and/or edge deletion update occurs at any time.Comment: To appear in IP