O~(n^{1/3})-Space Algorithm for the Grid Graph Reachability Problem

The directed graph reachability problem takes as input an n-vertex directed graph G=(V,E), and two distinguished vertices s and t. The problem is to determine whether there exists a path from s to t in G. This is a canonical complete problem for class NL. Asano et al. proposed an O~(sqrt{n}) space and polynomial time algorithm for the directed grid and planar graph reachability problem. The main result of this paper is to show that the directed graph reachability problem restricted to grid graphs can be solved in polynomial time using only O~(n^{1/3}) space

Deterministically Isolating a Perfect Matching in Bipartite Planar Graphs

We present a deterministic way of assigning small (log bit) weights to the edges of a bipartite planar graph so that the minimum weight perfect matching becomes unique. The isolation lemma as described in (Mulmuley et al. 1987) achieves the same for general graphs using a randomized weighting scheme, whereas we can do it deterministically when restricted to bipartite planar graphs. As a consequence, we reduce both decision and construction versions of the matching problem to testing whether a matrix is singular, under the promise that its determinant is 0 or 1, thus obtaining a highly parallel SPL algorithm for bipartite planar graphs. This improves the earlier known bounds of non-uniform SPL by (Allender et al. 1999) and $NC^2$ by (Miller and Naor 1995, Mahajan and Varadarajan 2000). It also rekindles the hope of obtaining a deterministic parallel algorithm for constructing a perfect matching in non-bipartite planar graphs, which has been open for a long time. Our techniques are elementary and simple