87 research outputs found
Weighted Linear Matroid Parity
The matroid parity (or matroid matching) problem, introduced as a common generalization of matching and matroid intersection problems, is so general that it requires an exponential number of oracle calls. Nevertheless, Lovasz (1978) showed that this problem admits a min-max formula and a polynomial algorithm for linearly represented matroids. Since then efficient algorithms have been developed for the linear matroid parity problem.
This talk presents a recently developed polynomial-time algorithm for the weighted linear matroid parity problem. The algorithm builds on a polynomial matrix formulation using Pfaffian and adopts a primal-dual approach based on the augmenting path algorithm of Gabow and Stallmann (1986) for the unweighted problem
Mathematical Programming Decoding of Binary Linear Codes: Theory and Algorithms
Mathematical programming is a branch of applied mathematics and has recently
been used to derive new decoding approaches, challenging established but often
heuristic algorithms based on iterative message passing. Concepts from
mathematical programming used in the context of decoding include linear,
integer, and nonlinear programming, network flows, notions of duality as well
as matroid and polyhedral theory. This survey article reviews and categorizes
decoding methods based on mathematical programming approaches for binary linear
codes over binary-input memoryless symmetric channels.Comment: 17 pages, submitted to the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory.
Published July 201
Combinatorial Optimization
Combinatorial Optimization is a very active field that benefits from bringing together ideas from different areas, e.g., graph theory and combinatorics, matroids and submodularity, connectivity and network flows, approximation algorithms and mathematical programming, discrete and computational geometry, discrete and continuous problems, algebraic and geometric methods, and applications. We continued the long tradition of triannual Oberwolfach workshops, bringing together the best researchers from the above areas, discovering new connections, and establishing new and deepening existing international collaborations
Complexity of packing common bases in matroids
One of the most intriguing unsolved questions of matroid optimization is the
characterization of the existence of disjoint common bases of two matroids.
The significance of the problem is well-illustrated by the long list of
conjectures that can be formulated as special cases, such as Woodall's
conjecture on packing disjoint dijoins in a directed graph, or Rota's beautiful
conjecture on rearrangements of bases.
In the present paper we prove that the problem is difficult under the rank
oracle model, i.e., we show that there is no algorithm which decides if the
common ground set of two matroids can be partitioned into common bases by
using a polynomial number of independence queries. Our complexity result holds
even for the very special case when .
Through a series of reductions, we also show that the abstract problem of
packing common bases in two matroids includes the NAE-SAT problem and the
Perfect Even Factor problem in directed graphs. These results in turn imply
that the problem is not only difficult in the independence oracle model but
also includes NP-complete special cases already when , one of the matroids
is a partition matroid, while the other matroid is linear and is given by an
explicit representation.Comment: 14 pages, 9 figure
Irreversible 2-conversion set in graphs of bounded degree
An irreversible -threshold process (also a -neighbor bootstrap
percolation) is a dynamic process on a graph where vertices change color from
white to black if they have at least black neighbors. An irreversible
-conversion set of a graph is a subset of vertices of such that
the irreversible -threshold process starting with black eventually
changes all vertices of to black. We show that deciding the existence of an
irreversible 2-conversion set of a given size is NP-complete, even for graphs
of maximum degree 4, which answers a question of Dreyer and Roberts.
Conversely, we show that for graphs of maximum degree 3, the minimum size of an
irreversible 2-conversion set can be computed in polynomial time. Moreover, we
find an optimal irreversible 3-conversion set for the toroidal grid,
simplifying constructions of Pike and Zou.Comment: 18 pages, 12 figures; journal versio
Oriented Matroids -- Combinatorial Structures Underlying Loop Quantum Gravity
We analyze combinatorial structures which play a central role in determining
spectral properties of the volume operator in loop quantum gravity (LQG). These
structures encode geometrical information of the embedding of arbitrary valence
vertices of a graph in 3-dimensional Riemannian space, and can be represented
by sign strings containing relative orientations of embedded edges. We
demonstrate that these signature factors are a special representation of the
general mathematical concept of an oriented matroid. Moreover, we show that
oriented matroids can also be used to describe the topology (connectedness) of
directed graphs. Hence the mathematical methods developed for oriented matroids
can be applied to the difficult combinatorics of embedded graphs underlying the
construction of LQG. As a first application we revisit the analysis of [4-5],
and find that enumeration of all possible sign configurations used there is
equivalent to enumerating all realizable oriented matroids of rank 3, and thus
can be greatly simplified. We find that for 7-valent vertices having no
coplanar triples of edge tangents, the smallest non-zero eigenvalue of the
volume spectrum does not grow as one increases the maximum spin \jmax at the
vertex, for any orientation of the edge tangents. This indicates that, in
contrast to the area operator, considering large \jmax does not necessarily
imply large volume eigenvalues. In addition we give an outlook to possible
starting points for rewriting the combinatorics of LQG in terms of oriented
matroids.Comment: 43 pages, 26 figures, LaTeX. Version published in CQG. Typos
corrected, presentation slightly extende
A randomized polynomial kernel for Subset Feedback Vertex Set
The Subset Feedback Vertex Set problem generalizes the classical Feedback
Vertex Set problem and asks, for a given undirected graph , a set , and an integer , whether there exists a set of at most
vertices such that no cycle in contains a vertex of . It was
independently shown by Cygan et al. (ICALP '11, SIDMA '13) and Kawarabayashi
and Kobayashi (JCTB '12) that Subset Feedback Vertex Set is fixed-parameter
tractable for parameter . Cygan et al. asked whether the problem also admits
a polynomial kernelization.
We answer the question of Cygan et al. positively by giving a randomized
polynomial kernelization for the equivalent version where is a set of
edges. In a first step we show that Edge Subset Feedback Vertex Set has a
randomized polynomial kernel parameterized by with
vertices. For this we use the matroid-based tools of Kratsch and Wahlstr\"om
(FOCS '12) that for example were used to obtain a polynomial kernel for
-Multiway Cut. Next we present a preprocessing that reduces the given
instance to an equivalent instance where the size of
is bounded by . These two results lead to a polynomial kernel for
Subset Feedback Vertex Set with vertices
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