195 research outputs found
Nested cycles in large triangulations and crossing-critical graphs
We show that every sufficiently large plane triangulation has a large
collection of nested cycles that either are pairwise disjoint, or pairwise
intersect in exactly one vertex, or pairwise intersect in exactly two vertices.
We apply this result to show that for each fixed positive integer , there
are only finitely many -crossing-critical simple graphs of average degree at
least six. Combined with the recent constructions of crossing-critical graphs
given by Bokal, this settles the question of for which numbers there is
an infinite family of -crossing-critical simple graphs of average degree
Treewidth, crushing, and hyperbolic volume
We prove that there exists a universal constant such that any closed
hyperbolic 3-manifold admits a triangulation of treewidth at most times its
volume. The converse is not true: we show there exists a sequence of hyperbolic
3-manifolds of bounded treewidth but volume approaching infinity. Along the
way, we prove that crushing a normal surface in a triangulation does not
increase the carving-width, and hence crushing any number of normal surfaces in
a triangulation affects treewidth by at most a constant multiple.Comment: 20 pages, 12 figures. V2: Section 4 has been rewritten, as the former
argument (in V1) used a construction that relied on a wrong theorem. Section
5.1 has also been adjusted to the new construction. Various other arguments
have been clarifie
Extremal Infinite Graph Theory
We survey various aspects of infinite extremal graph theory and prove several
new results. The lead role play the parameters connectivity and degree. This
includes the end degree. Many open problems are suggested.Comment: 41 pages, 16 figure
Planar Disjoint Paths, Treewidth, and Kernels
In the Planar Disjoint Paths problem, one is given an undirected planar graph
with a set of vertex pairs and the task is to find pairwise
vertex-disjoint paths such that the -th path connects to . We
study the problem through the lens of kernelization, aiming at efficiently
reducing the input size in terms of a parameter. We show that Planar Disjoint
Paths does not admit a polynomial kernel when parameterized by unless coNP
NP/poly, resolving an open problem by [Bodlaender, Thomass{\'e},
Yeo, ESA'09]. Moreover, we rule out the existence of a polynomial Turing kernel
unless the WK-hierarchy collapses. Our reduction carries over to the setting of
edge-disjoint paths, where the kernelization status remained open even in
general graphs.
On the positive side, we present a polynomial kernel for Planar Disjoint
Paths parameterized by , where denotes the treewidth of the input
graph. As a consequence of both our results, we rule out the possibility of a
polynomial-time (Turing) treewidth reduction to under the same
assumptions. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first hardness result of
this kind. Finally, combining our kernel with the known techniques [Adler,
Kolliopoulos, Krause, Lokshtanov, Saurabh, Thilikos, JCTB'17; Schrijver,
SICOMP'94] yields an alternative (and arguably simpler) proof that Planar
Disjoint Paths can be solved in time , matching the
result of [Lokshtanov, Misra, Pilipczuk, Saurabh, Zehavi, STOC'20].Comment: To appear at FOCS'23, 82 pages, 30 figure
A tourist guide through treewidth
A short overview is given of many recent results in algorithmic graph theory that deal with the notions treewidth, and pathwidth. We discuss algorithms that find tree-decompositions, algorithms that use tree-decompositions to solve hard problems efficiently, graph minor theory, and some applications. The paper contains an extensive bibliography
Tree-based decompositions of graphs on surfaces and applications to the traveling salesman problem
The tree-width and branch-width of a graph are two well-studied examples of parameters that measure how well a given graph can be decomposed into a tree structure. In this thesis we give several results and applications concerning these concepts, in particular if the graph is embedded on a surface.
In the first part of this thesis we develop a geometric description of tangles in graphs embedded on a fixed surface (tangles are the obstructions for low branch-width), generalizing a result of Robertson and Seymour. We use this result to establish a relationship between the branch-width of an embedded graph and the carving-width of an associated graph, generalizing a result for the plane of Seymour and Thomas. We also discuss how these results relate to the polynomial-time algorithm to determine the branch-width of planar graphs of Seymour and Thomas, and explain why their method does not generalize to surfaces other than the sphere.
We also prove a result concerning the class C_2k of minor-minimal graphs of branch-width 2k in the plane, for an integer k at least 2.
We show that applying a certain construction to a class of graphs in the projective plane yields a subclass of C_2k, but also show that not all members of C_2k arise in this way if k is at least 3.
The last part of the thesis is concerned with applications of graphs of bounded tree-width to the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP). We first show how one can solve the separation problem for comb inequalities (with an arbitrary number of teeth) in linear time if the tree-width is bounded. In the second part, we modify an algorithm of Letchford et al. using tree-decompositions to obtain a practical method for separating a different class of TSP inequalities, called simple DP constraints, and study their effectiveness for solving TSP instances.Ph.D.Committee Chair: Thomas, Robin; Committee Co-Chair: Cook, William J.; Committee Member: Dvorak, Zdenek; Committee Member: Parker, Robert G.; Committee Member: Yu, Xingxin
General vertex disjoint paths in series-parallel graphs
AbstractLet G = (V, E) be an undirected graph and let (si,ti), 1 ≤ i ≤ k be k pairs of vertices in G. The vertex disjoint paths problem is to find k paths P1,…,Pk such that Pi connects si and ti and any two of these paths may intersect only at a common endpoint. This problem is NP-complete even for planar graphs. Robertson and Seymour proved that when k is a fixed integer this problem becomes polynomial. We present a linear time algorithm for solving the decision version of the general problem when the input graph is a series-parallel graph
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