Local Conflict Coloring

Locally finding a solution to symmetry-breaking tasks such as vertex-coloring, edge-coloring, maximal matching, maximal independent set, etc., is a long-standing challenge in distributed network computing. More recently, it has also become a challenge in the framework of centralized local computation. We introduce conflict coloring as a general symmetry-breaking task that includes all the aforementioned tasks as specific instantiations --- conflict coloring includes all locally checkable labeling tasks from [Naor\&Stockmeyer, STOC 1993]. Conflict coloring is characterized by two parameters $l$ and $d$, where the former measures the amount of freedom given to the nodes for selecting their colors, and the latter measures the number of constraints which colors of adjacent nodes are subject to.We show that, in the standard LOCAL model for distributed network computing, if l/d \textgreater{} \Delta, then conflict coloring can be solved in $\tilde O(\sqrt{\Delta})+\log^*n$ rounds in $n$-node graphs with maximum degree $\Delta$, where $\tilde O$ ignores the polylog factors in $\Delta$. The dependency in~$n$ is optimal, as a consequence of the $\Omega(\log^*n)$ lower bound by [Linial, SIAM J. Comp. 1992] for $(\Delta+1)$-coloring. An important special case of our result is a significant improvement over the best known algorithm for distributed $(\Delta+1)$-coloring due to [Barenboim, PODC 2015], which required $\tilde O(\Delta^{3/4})+\log^*n$ rounds. Improvements for other variants of coloring, including $(\Delta+1)$-list-coloring, $(2\Delta-1)$-edge-coloring, $T$-coloring, etc., also follow from our general result on conflict coloring. Likewise, in the framework of centralized local computation algorithms (LCAs), our general result yields an LCA which requires a smaller number of probes than the previously best known algorithm for vertex-coloring, and works for a wide range of coloring problems

Local Conflict Coloring Revisited: Linial for Lists

Linial's famous color reduction algorithm reduces a given $m$-coloring of a graph with maximum degree $\Delta$ to a $O(\Delta^2\log m)$-coloring, in a single round in the LOCAL model. We show a similar result when nodes are restricted to choose their color from a list of allowed colors: given an $m$-coloring in a directed graph of maximum outdegree $\beta$, if every node has a list of size $\Omega(\beta^2 (\log \beta+\log\log m + \log \log |\mathcal{C}|))$ from a color space $\mathcal{C}$ then they can select a color in two rounds in the LOCAL model. Moreover, the communication of a node essentially consists of sending its list to the neighbors. This is obtained as part of a framework that also contains Linial's color reduction (with an alternative proof) as a special case. Our result also leads to a defective list coloring algorithm. As a corollary, we improve the state-of-the-art truly local $(deg+1)$-list coloring algorithm from Barenboim et al. [PODC'18] by slightly reducing the runtime to $O(\sqrt{\Delta\log\Delta})+\log^* n$ and significantly reducing the message size (from huge to roughly $\Delta$). Our techniques are inspired by the local conflict coloring framework of Fraigniaud et al. [FOCS'16].Comment: to appear at DISC 202

Proper Conflict-free Coloring of Graphs with Large Maximum Degree

A proper coloring of a graph is conflict-free if, for every non-isolated vertex, some color is used exactly once on its neighborhood. Caro, Petru\v{s}evski, and \v{S}krekovski proved that every graph $G$ has a proper conflict-free coloring with at most $5\Delta(G)/2$ colors and conjectured that $\Delta(G)+1$ colors suffice for every connected graph $G$ with $\Delta(G)\ge 3$. Our first main result is that even for list-coloring, $\left\lceil 1.6550826\Delta(G)+\sqrt{\Delta(G)}\right\rceil$ colors suffice for every graph $G$ with $\Delta(G)\ge 10^{9}$; we also prove slightly weaker bounds for all graphs with $\Delta(G)\ge 750$. These results follow from our more general framework on proper conflict-free list-coloring of a pair consisting of a graph $G$ and a ``conflict'' hypergraph ${\mathcal H}$. As another corollary of our results in this general framework, every graph has a proper $(\sqrt{30}+o(1))\Delta(G)^{1.5}$-list-coloring such that every bi-chromatic component is a path on at most three vertices, where the number of colors is optimal up to a constant factor. Our proof uses a fairly new type of recursive counting argument called Rosenfeld counting, which is a variant of the Lov\'{a}sz Local Lemma or entropy compression. We also prove an asymptotically optimal result for a fractional analogue of our general framework for proper conflict-free coloring for pairs of a graph and a conflict hypergraph. A corollary states that every graph $G$ has a fractional $(1+o(1))\Delta(G)$-coloring such that every fractionally bi-chromatic component has at most two vertices. In particular, it implies that the fractional analogue of the conjecture of Caro et al. holds asymptotically in a strong sense

Fast Coloring Despite Congested Relays

We provide a $O(\log^6 \log n)$-round randomized algorithm for distance-2 coloring in CONGEST with $\Delta^2+1$ colors. For $\Delta\gg\operatorname{poly}\log n$, this improves exponentially on the $O(\log\Delta+\operatorname{poly}\log\log n)$ algorithm of [Halld\'orsson, Kuhn, Maus, Nolin, DISC'20]. Our study is motivated by the ubiquity and hardness of local reductions in CONGEST. For instance, algorithms for the Local Lov\'asz Lemma [Moser, Tardos, JACM'10; Fischer, Ghaffari, DISC'17; Davies, SODA'23] usually assume communication on the conflict graph, which can be simulated in LOCAL with only constant overhead, while this may be prohibitively expensive in CONGEST. We hope our techniques help tackle in CONGEST other coloring problems defined by local relations.Comment: 37 pages. To appear in proceedings of DISC 202

On the Complexity of Local Distributed Graph Problems

This paper is centered on the complexity of graph problems in the well-studied LOCAL model of distributed computing, introduced by Linial [FOCS '87]. It is widely known that for many of the classic distributed graph problems (including maximal independent set (MIS) and $(\Delta+1)$-vertex coloring), the randomized complexity is at most polylogarithmic in the size $n$ of the network, while the best deterministic complexity is typically $2^{O(\sqrt{\log n})}$. Understanding and narrowing down this exponential gap is considered to be one of the central long-standing open questions in the area of distributed graph algorithms. We investigate the problem by introducing a complexity-theoretic framework that allows us to shed some light on the role of randomness in the LOCAL model. We define the SLOCAL model as a sequential version of the LOCAL model. Our framework allows us to prove completeness results with respect to the class of problems which can be solved efficiently in the SLOCAL model, implying that if any of the complete problems can be solved deterministically in $\log^{O(1)} n$ rounds in the LOCAL model, we can deterministically solve all efficient SLOCAL-problems (including MIS and $(\Delta+1)$-coloring) in $\log^{O(1)} n$ rounds in the LOCAL model. We show that a rather rudimentary looking graph coloring problem is complete in the above sense: Color the nodes of a graph with colors red and blue such that each node of sufficiently large polylogarithmic degree has at least one neighbor of each color. The problem admits a trivial zero-round randomized solution. The result can be viewed as showing that the only obstacle to getting efficient determinstic algorithms in the LOCAL model is an efficient algorithm to approximately round fractional values into integer values