Parameterized Complexity of Edge-Coloured and Signed Graph Homomorphism Problems

We study the complexity of graph modification problems with respect to homomorphism-based colouring properties of edge-coloured graphs. A homomorphism from an edge-coloured graph G to an edge-coloured graph H is a vertex-mapping from G to H that preserves adjacencies and edge-colours. We consider the property of having a homomorphism to a fixed edge-coloured graph H, which generalises the classic vertex-colourability property. The question we are interested in is the following: given an edge-coloured graph G, can we perform k graph operations so that the resulting graph admits a homomorphism to H? The operations we consider are vertex-deletion, edge-deletion and switching (an operation that permutes the colours of the edges incident to a given vertex). Switching plays an important role in the theory of signed graphs, that are 2-edge-coloured graphs whose colours are the signs + and -. We denote the corresponding problems (parameterized by k) by Vertex Deletion-H-Colouring, Edge Deletion-H-Colouring and Switching-H-Colouring. These problems generalise the extensively studied H-Colouring problem (where one has to decide if an input graph admits a homomorphism to a fixed target H). For 2-edge-coloured H, it is known that H-Colouring already captures the complexity of all fixed-target Constraint Satisfaction Problems. Our main focus is on the case where H is an edge-coloured graph of order at most 2, a case that is already interesting since it includes standard problems such as Vertex Cover, Odd Cycle Transversal and Edge Bipartization. For such a graph H, we give a PTime/NP-complete complexity dichotomy for all three Vertex Deletion-H-Colouring, Edge Deletion-H-Colouring and Switching-H-Colouring problems. Then, we address their parameterized complexity. We show that all Vertex Deletion-H-Colouring and Edge Deletion-H-Colouring problems for such H are FPT. This is in contrast with the fact that already for some H of order 3, unless PTime = NP, none of the three considered problems is in XP, since 3-Colouring is NP-complete. We show that the situation is different for Switching-H-Colouring: there are three 2-edge-coloured graphs H of order 2 for which Switching-H-Colouring is W[1]-hard, and assuming the ETH, admits no algorithm in time f(k)n^{o(k)} for inputs of size n and for any computable function f. For the other cases, Switching-H-Colouring is FPT

Colouring of Graphs with Ramsey-Type Forbidden Subgraphs

A colouring of a graph G = (V;E) is a mapping c : V ! f1; 2; : : :g such that c(u) 6= c(v) if uv 2 E; if jc(V )j k then c is a k-colouring. The Colouring problem is that of testing whether a given graph has a k-colouring for some given integer k. If a graph contains no induced subgraph isomorphic to any graph in some family H, then it is called H-free. The complexity of Colouring for H-free graphs with jHj = 1 has been completely classied. When jHj = 2, the classication is still wide open, although many partial results are known. We continue this line of research and forbid induced subgraphs fH1;H2g, where we allow H1 to have a single edge and H2 to have a single nonedge. Instead of showing only polynomial-time solvability, we prove that Colouring on such graphs is xed-parameter tractable when parameterized by jH1j + jH2j. As a byproduct, we obtain the same result both for the problem of determining a maximum independent set and for the problem of determining a maximum clique

Dynamic Complexity Meets Parameterised Algorithms

Dynamic Complexity studies the maintainability of queries with logical formulas in a setting where the underlying structure or database changes over time. Most often, these formulas are from first-order logic, giving rise to the dynamic complexity class DynFO. This paper investigates extensions of DynFO in the spirit of parameterised algorithms. In this setting structures come with a parameter k and the extensions allow additional "space" of size f(k) (in the form of an additional structure of this size) or additional time f(k) (in the form of iterations of formulas) or both. The resulting classes are compared with their non-dynamic counterparts and other classes. The main part of the paper explores the applicability of methods for parameterised algorithms to this setting through case studies for various well-known parameterised problems

Playing with parameters: structural parameterization in graphs

When considering a graph problem from a parameterized point of view, the parameter chosen is often the size of an optimal solution of this problem (the "standard" parameter). A natural subject for investigation is what happens when we parameterize such a problem by various other parameters, some of which may be the values of optimal solutions to different problems. Such research is known as parameterized ecology. In this paper, we investigate seven natural vertex problems, along with their respective parameters: the size of a maximum independent set, the size of a minimum vertex cover, the size of a maximum clique, the chromatic number, the size of a minimum dominating set, the size of a minimum independent dominating set and the size of a minimum feedback vertex set. We study the parameterized complexity of each of these problems with respect to the standard parameter of the others.Comment: 17 page

Exponential Time Complexity of the Permanent and the Tutte Polynomial

We show conditional lower bounds for well-studied #P-hard problems: (a) The number of satisfying assignments of a 2-CNF formula with n variables cannot be counted in time exp(o(n)), and the same is true for computing the number of all independent sets in an n-vertex graph. (b) The permanent of an n x n matrix with entries 0 and 1 cannot be computed in time exp(o(n)). (c) The Tutte polynomial of an n-vertex multigraph cannot be computed in time exp(o(n)) at most evaluation points (x,y) in the case of multigraphs, and it cannot be computed in time exp(o(n/polylog n)) in the case of simple graphs. Our lower bounds are relative to (variants of) the Exponential Time Hypothesis (ETH), which says that the satisfiability of n-variable 3-CNF formulas cannot be decided in time exp(o(n)). We relax this hypothesis by introducing its counting version #ETH, namely that the satisfying assignments cannot be counted in time exp(o(n)). In order to use #ETH for our lower bounds, we transfer the sparsification lemma for d-CNF formulas to the counting setting

The Parameterised Complexity of List Problems on Graphs of Bounded Treewidth

We consider the parameterised complexity of several list problems on graphs, with parameter treewidth or pathwidth. In particular, we show that List Edge Chromatic Number and List Total Chromatic Number are fixed parameter tractable, parameterised by treewidth, whereas List Hamilton Path is W[1]-hard, even parameterised by pathwidth. These results resolve two open questions of Fellows, Fomin, Lokshtanov, Rosamond, Saurabh, Szeider and Thomassen (2011).Comment: Author final version, to appear in Information and Computation. Changes from previous version include improved literature references and restructured proof in Section

Some hard families of parameterised counting problems

We consider parameterised subgraph-counting problems of the following form: given a graph G, how many k-tuples of its vertices have a given property? A number of such problems are known to be #W[1]-complete; here we substantially generalise some of these existing results by proving hardness for two large families of such problems. We demonstrate that it is #W[1]-hard to count the number of k-vertex subgraphs having any property where the number of distinct edge-densities of labelled subgraphs that satisfy the property is o(k^2). In the special case that the property in question depends only on the number of edges in the subgraph, we give a strengthening of this result which leads to our second family of hard problems.Comment: A few more minor changes. This version to appear in the ACM Transactions on Computation Theor

The parameterised complexity of counting connected subgraphs and graph motifs

We introduce a family of parameterised counting problems on graphs, p-#Induced Subgraph With Property(Φ), which generalises a number of problems which have previously been studied. This paper focuses on the case in which Φ defines a family of graphs whose edge-minimal elements all have bounded treewidth; this includes the special case in which Φ describes the property of being connected. We show that exactly counting the number of connected induced k-vertex subgraphs in an n-vertex graph is #W[1]-hard, but on the other hand there exists an FPTRAS for the problem; more generally, we show that there exists an FPTRAS for p-#Induced Subgraph With Property(Φ) whenever Φ is monotone and all the minimal graphs satisfying Φ have bounded treewidth. We then apply these results to a counting version of the Graph Motif problem