11 research outputs found
Digraph Complexity Measures and Applications in Formal Language Theory
We investigate structural complexity measures on digraphs, in particular the
cycle rank. This concept is intimately related to a classical topic in formal
language theory, namely the star height of regular languages. We explore this
connection, and obtain several new algorithmic insights regarding both cycle
rank and star height. Among other results, we show that computing the cycle
rank is NP-complete, even for sparse digraphs of maximum outdegree 2.
Notwithstanding, we provide both a polynomial-time approximation algorithm and
an exponential-time exact algorithm for this problem. The former algorithm
yields an O((log n)^(3/2))- approximation in polynomial time, whereas the
latter yields the optimum solution, and runs in time and space O*(1.9129^n) on
digraphs of maximum outdegree at most two. Regarding the star height problem,
we identify a subclass of the regular languages for which we can precisely
determine the computational complexity of the star height problem. Namely, the
star height problem for bideterministic languages is NP-complete, and this
holds already for binary alphabets. Then we translate the algorithmic results
concerning cycle rank to the bideterministic star height problem, thus giving a
polynomial-time approximation as well as a reasonably fast exact exponential
algorithm for bideterministic star height.Comment: 19 pages, 1 figur
Transiently Consistent SDN Updates: Being Greedy is Hard
The software-defined networking paradigm introduces interesting opportunities
to operate networks in a more flexible, optimized, yet formally verifiable
manner. Despite the logically centralized control, however, a Software-Defined
Network (SDN) is still a distributed system, with inherent delays between the
switches and the controller. Especially the problem of changing network
configurations in a consistent manner, also known as the consistent network
update problem, has received much attention over the last years. In particular,
it has been shown that there exists an inherent tradeoff between update
consistency and speed. This paper revisits the problem of updating an SDN in a
transiently consistent, loop-free manner. First, we rigorously prove that
computing a maximum (greedy) loop-free network update is generally NP-hard;
this result has implications for the classic maximum acyclic subgraph problem
(the dual feedback arc set problem) as well. Second, we show that for special
problem instances, fast and good approximation algorithms exist
Digraph Complexity Measures and Applications in Formal Language Theory
We investigate structural complexity measures on digraphs, in particular the
cycle rank. This concept is intimately related to a classical topic in formal
language theory, namely the star height of regular languages. We explore this
connection, and obtain several new algorithmic insights regarding both cycle
rank and star height. Among other results, we show that computing the cycle
rank is NP-complete, even for sparse digraphs of maximum outdegree 2.
Notwithstanding, we provide both a polynomial-time approximation algorithm and
an exponential-time exact algorithm for this problem. The former algorithm
yields an O((log n)^(3/2))- approximation in polynomial time, whereas the
latter yields the optimum solution, and runs in time and space O*(1.9129^n) on
digraphs of maximum outdegree at most two. Regarding the star height problem,
we identify a subclass of the regular languages for which we can precisely
determine the computational complexity of the star height problem. Namely, the
star height problem for bideterministic languages is NP-complete, and this
holds already for binary alphabets. Then we translate the algorithmic results
concerning cycle rank to the bideterministic star height problem, thus giving a
polynomial-time approximation as well as a reasonably fast exact exponential
algorithm for bideterministic star height.Comment: 19 pages, 1 figur
On the Monotonicity of Process Number
International audienceGraph searching games involve a team of searchers that aims at capturing a fugitive in a graph. These games have been widely studied for their relationships with the tree-and the path-decomposition of graphs. In order to define de-compositions for directed graphs, similar games have been proposed in directed graphs. In this paper, we consider a game that has been defined and studied in the context of routing reconfiguration problems in WDM networks. Namely, in the processing game, the fugitive is invisible, arbitrarily fast, it moves in the opposite direction of the arcs of a digraph, but only as long as it can access to a strongly connected component free of searchers. We prove that the processing game is monotone which leads to its equivalence with a new digraph decomposition
Adapting the Directed Grid Theorem into an FPT Algorithm
The Grid Theorem of Robertson and Seymour [JCTB, 1986], is one of the most
important tools in the field of structural graph theory, finding numerous
applications in the design of algorithms for undirected graphs. An analogous
version of the Grid Theorem in digraphs was conjectured by Johnson et al.
[JCTB, 2001], and proved by Kawarabayashi and Kreutzer [STOC, 2015]. Namely,
they showed that there is a function such that every digraph of directed
tree-width at least contains a cylindrical grid of size as a
butterfly minor and stated that their proof can be turned into an XP algorithm,
with parameter , that either constructs a decomposition of the appropriate
width, or finds the claimed large cylindrical grid as a butterfly minor. In
this paper, we adapt some of the steps of the proof of Kawarabayashi and
Kreutzer to improve this XP algorithm into an FPT algorithm. Towards this, our
main technical contributions are two FPT algorithms with parameter . The
first one either produces an arboreal decomposition of width or finds a
haven of order in a digraph , improving on the original result for
arboreal decompositions by Johnson et al. The second algorithm finds a
well-linked set of order in a digraph of large directed tree-width. As
tools to prove these results, we show how to solve a generalized version of the
problem of finding balanced separators for a given set of vertices in FPT
time with parameter , a result that we consider to be of its own interest.Comment: 31 pages, 9 figure