276 research outputs found
The evolution of the cover time
The cover time of a graph is a celebrated example of a parameter that is easy
to approximate using a randomized algorithm, but for which no constant factor
deterministic polynomial time approximation is known. A breakthrough due to
Kahn, Kim, Lovasz and Vu yielded a (log log n)^2 polynomial time approximation.
We refine this upper bound, and show that the resulting bound is sharp and
explicitly computable in random graphs. Cooper and Frieze showed that the cover
time of the largest component of the Erdos-Renyi random graph G(n,c/n) in the
supercritical regime with c>1 fixed, is asymptotic to f(c) n \log^2 n, where
f(c) tends to 1 as c tends to 1. However, our new bound implies that the cover
time for the critical Erdos-Renyi random graph G(n,1/n) has order n, and shows
how the cover time evolves from the critical window to the supercritical phase.
Our general estimate also yields the order of the cover time for a variety of
other concrete graphs, including critical percolation clusters on the Hamming
hypercube {0,1}^n, on high-girth expanders, and on tori Z_n^d for fixed large
d. For the graphs we consider, our results show that the blanket time,
introduced by Winkler and Zuckerman, is within a constant factor of the cover
time. Finally, we prove that for any connected graph, adding an edge can
increase the cover time by at most a factor of 4.Comment: 14 pages, to appear in CP
Deterministic rendezvous, treasure hunts and strongly universal exploration sequences
We obtain several improved solutions for the deterministic rendezvous problem in general undirected graphs. Our solutions answer several problems left open by Dessmark et al. We also introduce an interesting variant of the rendezvous problem which we call the deterministic treasure hunt problem. Both the rendezvous and the treasure hunt problems motivate the study of universal traversal sequences and universal exploration sequences with some strengthened properties. We call such sequences strongly universal traversal (exploration) sequences. We give an explicit construction of strongly universal exploration sequences. The existence of strongly universal traversal sequences, as well as the solution of the most difficult variant of the deterministic treasure hunt problem, are left as intriguing open problems.
Tight bounds for undirected graph exploration with pebbles and multiple agents
We study the problem of deterministically exploring an undirected and
initially unknown graph with vertices either by a single agent equipped
with a set of pebbles, or by a set of collaborating agents. The vertices of the
graph are unlabeled and cannot be distinguished by the agents, but the edges
incident to a vertex have locally distinct labels. The graph is explored when
all vertices have been visited by at least one agent. In this setting, it is
known that for a single agent without pebbles bits of memory
are necessary and sufficient to explore any graph with at most vertices. We
are interested in how the memory requirement decreases as the agent may mark
vertices by dropping and retrieving distinguishable pebbles, or when multiple
agents jointly explore the graph. We give tight results for both questions
showing that for a single agent with constant memory
pebbles are necessary and sufficient for exploration. We further prove that the
same bound holds for the number of collaborating agents needed for exploration.
For the upper bound, we devise an algorithm for a single agent with constant
memory that explores any -vertex graph using
pebbles, even when is unknown. The algorithm terminates after polynomial
time and returns to the starting vertex. Since an additional agent is at least
as powerful as a pebble, this implies that agents
with constant memory can explore any -vertex graph. For the lower bound, we
show that the number of agents needed for exploring any graph of size is
already when we allow each agent to have at most
bits of memory for any .
This also implies that a single agent with sublogarithmic memory needs
pebbles to explore any -vertex graph
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