Rendezvous of Distance-aware Mobile Agents in Unknown Graphs

We study the problem of rendezvous of two mobile agents starting at distinct locations in an unknown graph. The agents have distinct labels and walk in synchronous steps. However the graph is unlabelled and the agents have no means of marking the nodes of the graph and cannot communicate with or see each other until they meet at a node. When the graph is very large we want the time to rendezvous to be independent of the graph size and to depend only on the initial distance between the agents and some local parameters such as the degree of the vertices, and the size of the agent's label. It is well known that even for simple graphs of degree $\Delta$, the rendezvous time can be exponential in $\Delta$ in the worst case. In this paper, we introduce a new version of the rendezvous problem where the agents are equipped with a device that measures its distance to the other agent after every step. We show that these \emph{distance-aware} agents are able to rendezvous in any unknown graph, in time polynomial in all the local parameters such the degree of the nodes, the initial distance $D$ and the size of the smaller of the two agent labels $l = \min(l_1, l_2)$. Our algorithm has a time complexity of $O(\Delta(D+\log{l}))$ and we show an almost matching lower bound of $\Omega(\Delta(D+\log{l}/\log{\Delta}))$ on the time complexity of any rendezvous algorithm in our scenario. Further, this lower bound extends existing lower bounds for the general rendezvous problem without distance awareness

On the Distinguishing Number of Cyclic Tournaments: Towards the Albertson-Collins Conjecture

A distinguishing $r$-labeling of a digraph $G$ is a mapping $\lambda$ from the set of verticesof $G$ to the set of labels $\{1,\dots,r\}$ such that no nontrivial automorphism of $G$ preserves all the labels.The distinguishing number $D(G)$ of $G$ is then the smallest $r$ for which $G$ admits a distinguishing $r$-labeling.From a result of Gluck (David Gluck, Trivial set-stabilizers in finite permutation groups,{\em Can. J. Math.} 35(1) (1983), 59--67),it follows that $D(T)=2$ for every cyclic tournament~$T$ of (odd) order $2q+1\ge 3$.Let $V(T)=\{0,\dots,2q\}$ for every such tournament.Albertson and Collins conjectured in 1999that the canonical 2-labeling $\lambda^*$ given by$\lambda^*(i)=1$ if and only if $i\le q$ is distinguishing.We prove that whenever one of the subtournaments of $T$ induced by vertices $\{0,\dots,q\}$or $\{q+1,\dots,2q\}$ is rigid, $T$ satisfies Albertson-Collins Conjecture.Using this property, we prove that several classes of cyclic tournaments satisfy Albertson-Collins Conjecture.Moreover, we also prove that every Paley tournament satisfies Albertson-Collins Conjecture

On tree-decompositions of one-ended graphs

A graph is one-ended if it contains a ray (a one way infinite path) and whenever we remove a finite number of vertices from the graph then what remains has only one component which contains rays. A vertex $v$ {\em dominates} a ray in the end if there are infinitely many paths connecting $v$ to the ray such that any two of these paths have only the vertex $v$ in common. We prove that if a one-ended graph contains no ray which is dominated by a vertex and no infinite family of pairwise disjoint rays, then it has a tree-decomposition such that the decomposition tree is one-ended and the tree-decomposition is invariant under the group of automorphisms. This can be applied to prove a conjecture of Halin from 2000 that the automorphism group of such a graph cannot be countably infinite and solves a recent problem of Boutin and Imrich. Furthermore, it implies that every transitive one-ended graph contains an infinite family of pairwise disjoint rays

Optimal infinite scheduling for multi-priced timed automata

This paper is concerned with the derivation of infinite schedules for timed automata that are in some sense optimal. To cover a wide class of optimality criteria we start out by introducing an extension of the (priced) timed automata model that includes both costs and rewards as separate modelling features. A precise definition is then given of what constitutes optimal infinite behaviours for this class of models. We subsequently show that the derivation of optimal non-terminating schedules for such double-priced timed automata is computable. This is done by a reduction of the problem to the determination of optimal mean-cycles in finite graphs with weighted edges. This reduction is obtained by introducing the so-called corner-point abstraction, a powerful abstraction technique of which we show that it preserves optimal schedules

Automated Discharging Arguments for Density Problems in Grids

Discharging arguments demonstrate a connection between local structure and global averages. This makes it an effective tool for proving lower bounds on the density of special sets in infinite grids. However, the minimum density of an identifying code in the hexagonal grid remains open, with an upper bound of $\frac{3}{7} \approx 0.428571$ and a lower bound of $\frac{5}{12}\approx 0.416666$. We present a new, experimental framework for producing discharging arguments using an algorithm. This algorithm replaces the lengthy case analysis of human-written discharging arguments with a linear program that produces the best possible lower bound using the specified set of discharging rules. We use this framework to present a lower bound of $\frac{23}{55} \approx 0.418181$ on the density of an identifying code in the hexagonal grid, and also find several sharp lower bounds for variations on identifying codes in the hexagonal, square, and triangular grids.Comment: This is an extended abstract, with 10 pages, 2 appendices, 5 tables, and 2 figure