14 research outputs found
Shortest paths in nearly conservative digraphs
We introduce the following notion: a digraph D = (V, A) with arc weights c: A → R is called nearly conservative if every negative cycle consists of two arcs. Computing shortest paths in nearly conservative digraphs is NP-hard, and even deciding whether a digraph is nearly conservative is coNP-complete. We show that the “All Pairs Shortest Path” problem is fixed parameter tractable with various parameters for nearly conservative digraphs. The results also apply for the special case of conservative mixed graphs
Linear Time Parameterized Algorithms via Skew-Symmetric Multicuts
A skew-symmetric graph is a directed graph with an
involution on the set of vertices and arcs. In this paper, we
introduce a separation problem, -Skew-Symmetric Multicut, where we are given
a skew-symmetric graph , a family of of -sized subsets of
vertices and an integer . The objective is to decide if there is a set
of arcs such that every set in the family has a vertex
such that and are in different connected components of
. In this paper, we give an algorithm for
this problem which runs in time , where is the
number of arcs in the graph, the number of vertices and the length
of the family given in the input.
Using our algorithm, we show that Almost 2-SAT has an algorithm with running
time and we obtain algorithms for {\sc Odd Cycle Transversal}
and {\sc Edge Bipartization} which run in time and
respectively. This resolves an open problem posed by Reed,
Smith and Vetta [Operations Research Letters, 2003] and improves upon the
earlier almost linear time algorithm of Kawarabayashi and Reed [SODA, 2010].
We also show that Deletion q-Horn Backdoor Set Detection is a special case of
3-Skew-Symmetric Multicut, giving us an algorithm for Deletion q-Horn Backdoor
Set Detection which runs in time . This gives the first
fixed-parameter tractable algorithm for this problem answering a question posed
in a paper by a superset of the authors [STACS, 2013]. Using this result, we
get an algorithm for Satisfiability which runs in time where
is the size of the smallest q-Horn deletion backdoor set, with being
the length of the input formula
Maximum Skew-Symmetric Flows and Matchings
The maximum integer skew-symmetric flow problem (MSFP) generalizes both the
maximum flow and maximum matching problems. It was introduced by Tutte in terms
of self-conjugate flows in antisymmetrical digraphs. He showed that for these
objects there are natural analogs of classical theoretical results on usual
network flows, such as the flow decomposition, augmenting path, and max-flow
min-cut theorems. We give unified and shorter proofs for those theoretical
results.
We then extend to MSFP the shortest augmenting path method of Edmonds and
Karp and the blocking flow method of Dinits, obtaining algorithms with similar
time bounds in general case. Moreover, in the cases of unit arc capacities and
unit ``node capacities'' the blocking skew-symmetric flow algorithm has time
bounds similar to those established in Even and Tarjan (1975) and Karzanov
(1973) for Dinits' algorithm. In particular, this implies an algorithm for
finding a maximum matching in a nonbipartite graph in time,
which matches the time bound for the algorithm of Micali and Vazirani. Finally,
extending a clique compression technique of Feder and Motwani to particular
skew-symmetric graphs, we speed up the implied maximum matching algorithm to
run in time, improving the best known bound
for dense nonbipartite graphs.
Also other theoretical and algorithmic results on skew-symmetric flows and
their applications are presented.Comment: 35 pages, 3 figures, to appear in Mathematical Programming, minor
stylistic corrections and shortenings to the original versio