A Polynomial-Time Randomized Reduction from Tournament Isomorphism to Tournament Asymmetry

The paper develops a new technique to extract a characteristic subset from a random source that repeatedly samples from a set of elements. Here a characteristic subset is a set that when containing an element contains all elements that have the same probability. With this technique at hand the paper looks at the special case of the tournament isomorphism problem that stands in the way towards a polynomial-time algorithm for the graph isomorphism problem. Noting that there is a reduction from the automorphism (asymmetry) problem to the isomorphism problem, a reduction in the other direction is nevertheless not known and remains a thorny open problem. Applying the new technique, we develop a randomized polynomial-time Turing-reduction from the tournament isomorphism problem to the tournament automorphism problem. This is the first such reduction for any kind of combinatorial object not known to have a polynomial-time solvable isomorphism problem

Surjective H-Colouring over reflexive digraphs

The Surjective H-Colouring problem is to test if a given graph allows a vertex-surjective homomorphism to a fixed graph H. The complexity of this problem has been well studied for undirected (partially) reflexive graphs. We introduce endo-triviality, the property of a structure that all of its endomorphisms that do not have range of size 1 are automorphisms, as a means to obtain complexity-theoretic classifications of Surjective H-Colouring in the case of reflexive digraphs. Chen (2014) proved, in the setting of constraint satisfaction problems, that Surjective H-Colouring is NP-complete if H has the property that all of its polymorphisms are essentially unary. We give the first concrete application of his result by showing that every endo-trivial reflexive digraph H has this property. We then use the concept of endo-triviality to prove, as our main result, a dichotomy for Surjective H-Colouring when H is a reflexive tournament: if H is transitive, then Surjective H-Colouring is in NL; otherwise, it is NP-complete. By combining this result with some known and new results, we obtain a complexity classification for Surjective H-Colouring when H is a partially reflexive digraph of size at most 3

The Complexity of Combinations of Qualitative Constraint Satisfaction Problems

The CSP of a first-order theory $T$ is the problem of deciding for a given finite set $S$ of atomic formulas whether $T \cup S$ is satisfiable. Let $T_1$ and $T_2$ be two theories with countably infinite models and disjoint signatures. Nelson and Oppen presented conditions that imply decidability (or polynomial-time decidability) of $\mathrm{CSP}(T_1 \cup T_2)$ under the assumption that $\mathrm{CSP}(T_1)$ and $\mathrm{CSP}(T_2)$ are decidable (or polynomial-time decidable). We show that for a large class of $\omega$-categorical theories $T_1, T_2$ the Nelson-Oppen conditions are not only sufficient, but also necessary for polynomial-time tractability of $\mathrm{CSP}(T_1 \cup T_2)$ (unless P=NP)

Reachability analysis of first-order definable pushdown systems

We study pushdown systems where control states, stack alphabet, and transition relation, instead of being finite, are first-order definable in a fixed countably-infinite structure. We show that the reachability analysis can be addressed with the well-known saturation technique for the wide class of oligomorphic structures. Moreover, for the more restrictive homogeneous structures, we are able to give concrete complexity upper bounds. We show ample applicability of our technique by presenting several concrete examples of homogeneous structures, subsuming, with optimal complexity, known results from the literature. We show that infinitely many such examples of homogeneous structures can be obtained with the classical wreath product construction.Comment: to appear in CSL'1

Oriented coloring on recursively defined digraphs

Coloring is one of the most famous problems in graph theory. The coloring problem on undirected graphs has been well studied, whereas there are very few results for coloring problems on directed graphs. An oriented k-coloring of an oriented graph G=(V,A) is a partition of the vertex set V into k independent sets such that all the arcs linking two of these subsets have the same direction. The oriented chromatic number of an oriented graph G is the smallest k such that G allows an oriented k-coloring. Deciding whether an acyclic digraph allows an oriented 4-coloring is NP-hard. It follows, that finding the chromatic number of an oriented graph is an NP-hard problem. This motivates to consider the problem on oriented co-graphs. After giving several characterizations for this graph class, we show a linear time algorithm which computes an optimal oriented coloring for an oriented co-graph. We further prove how the oriented chromatic number can be computed for the disjoint union and order composition from the oriented chromatic number of the involved oriented co-graphs. It turns out that within oriented co-graphs the oriented chromatic number is equal to the length of a longest oriented path plus one. We also show that the graph isomorphism problem on oriented co-graphs can be solved in linear time.Comment: 14 page

QCSP on reflexive tournaments

We give a complexity dichotomy for the Quantified Constraint Satisfaction Problem QCSP(H) when H is a reflexive tournament. It is well known that reflexive tournaments can be split into a sequence of strongly connected components H1,…,Hn so that there exists an edge from every vertex of Hi to every vertex of Hj if and only if

The Isomorphism Problem for Planar 3-Connected Graphs is in Unambiguous Logspace

The isomorphism problem for planar graphs is known to be efficiently solvable. For planar 3-connected graphs, the isomorphism problem can be solved by efficient parallel algorithms, it is in the class $AC^1$. In this paper we improve the upper bound for planar 3-connected graphs to unambiguous logspace, in fact to $UL \cap coUL$. As a consequence of our method we get that the isomorphism problem for oriented graphs is in $NL$. We also show that the problems are hard for $L$