A New Framework for Network Disruption

Traditional network disruption approaches focus on disconnecting or lengthening paths in the network. We present a new framework for network disruption that attempts to reroute flow through critical vertices via vertex deletion, under the assumption that this will render those vertices vulnerable to future attacks. We define the load on a critical vertex to be the number of paths in the network that must flow through the vertex. We present graph-theoretic and computational techniques to maximize this load, firstly by removing either a single vertex from the network, secondly by removing a subset of vertices.Comment: Submitted for peer review on September 13, 201

Explicit expanders with cutoff phenomena

The cutoff phenomenon describes a sharp transition in the convergence of an ergodic finite Markov chain to equilibrium. Of particular interest is understanding this convergence for the simple random walk on a bounded-degree expander graph. The first example of a family of bounded-degree graphs where the random walk exhibits cutoff in total-variation was provided only very recently, when the authors showed this for a typical random regular graph. However, no example was known for an explicit (deterministic) family of expanders with this phenomenon. Here we construct a family of cubic expanders where the random walk from a worst case initial position exhibits total-variation cutoff. Variants of this construction give cubic expanders without cutoff, as well as cubic graphs with cutoff at any prescribed time-point.Comment: 17 pages, 2 figure

Shortest paths between shortest paths and independent sets

We study problems of reconfiguration of shortest paths in graphs. We prove that the shortest reconfiguration sequence can be exponential in the size of the graph and that it is NP-hard to compute the shortest reconfiguration sequence even when we know that the sequence has polynomial length. Moreover, we also study reconfiguration of independent sets in three different models and analyze relationships between these models, observing that shortest path reconfiguration is a special case of independent set reconfiguration in perfect graphs, under any of the three models. Finally, we give polynomial results for restricted classes of graphs (even-hole-free and $P_4$-free graphs)