Square-Root Finding Problem In Graphs, A Complete Dichotomy Theorem

Graph G is the square of graph H if two vertices x,y have an edge in G if and only if x,y are of distance at most two in H. Given H it is easy to compute its square H^2. Determining if a given graph G is the square of some graph is not easy in general. Motwani and Sudan proved that it is NP-complete to determine if a given graph G is the square of some graph. The graph introduced in their reduction is a graph that contains many triangles and is relatively dense. Farzad et al. proved the NP-completeness for finding a square root for girth 4 while they gave a polynomial time algorithm for computing a square root of girth at least six. Adamaszek and Adamaszek proved that if a graph has a square root of girth six then this square root is unique up to isomorphism. In this paper we consider the characterization and recognition problem of graphs that are square of graphs of girth at least five. We introduce a family of graphs with exponentially many non-isomorphic square roots, and as the main result of this paper we prove that the square root finding problem is NP-complete for square roots of girth five. This proof is providing the complete dichotomy theorem for square root problem in terms of the girth of the square roots

Square Root Finding In Graphs

Abstract: Root and root finding are concepts familiar to most branches of mathematics. In graph theory, H is a square root of G and G is the square of H if two vertices x,y have an edge in G if and only if x,y are of distance at most two in H. Graph square is a basic operation with a number of results about its properties in the literature. We study the characterization and recognition problems of graph powers. There are algorithmic and computational approaches to answer the decision problem of whether a given graph is a certain power of any graph. There are polynomial time algorithms to solve this problem for square of graphs with girth at least six while the NP-completeness is proven for square of graphs with girth at most four. The girth-parameterized problem of root fining has been open in the case of square of graphs with girth five. We settle the conjecture that recognition of square of graphs with girth 5 is NP-complete. This result is providing the complete dichotomy theorem for square root finding problem

Graph Algorithms and Complexity Aspects on Special Graph Classes

Graphs are a very flexible tool within mathematics, as such, numerous problems can be solved by formulating them as an instance of a graph. As a result, however, some of the structures found in real world problems may be lost in a more general graph. An example of this is the 4-Colouring problem which, as a graph problem, is NP-complete. However, when a map is converted into a graph, we observe that this graph has structural properties, namely being (K_5, K_{3,3})-minor-free which can be exploited and as such there exist algorithms which can find 4-colourings of maps in polynomial time. This thesis looks at problems which are NP-complete in general and determines the complexity of the problem when various restrictions are placed on the input, both for the purpose of finding tractable solutions for inputs which have certain structures, and to increase our understanding of the point at which a problem becomes NP-complete. This thesis looks at four problems over four chapters, the first being Parallel Knock-Out. This chapter will show that Parallel Knock-Out can be solved in O(n+m) time on P_4-free graphs, also known as cographs, however, remains hard on split graphs, a subclass of P_5-free graphs. From this a dichotomy is shown on $P_k$-free graphs for any fixed integer $k$. The second chapter looks at Minimal Disconnected Cut. Along with some smaller results, the main result in this chapter is another dichotomy theorem which states that Minimal Disconnected Cut is polynomial time solvable for 3-connected planar graphs but NP-hard for 2-connected planar graphs. The third chapter looks at Square Root. Whilst a number of results were found, the work in this thesis focuses on the Square Root problem when restricted to some classes of graphs with low clique number. The final chapter looks at Surjective H-Colouring. This chapter shows that Surjective H-Colouring is NP-complete, for any fixed, non-loop connected graph H with two reflexive vertices and for any fixed graph H’ which can be obtained from H by replacing vertices with true twins. This result enabled us to determine the complexity of Surjective H-Colouring on all fixed graphs H of size at most 4

Computing Graph Roots Without Short Cycles

Graph G is the square of graph H if two vertices x, y have an edge in G if and only if x, y are of distance at most two in H. Given H it is easy to compute its square H2, however Motwani and Sudan proved that it is NP-complete to determine if a given graph G is the square of some graph H (of girth 3). In this paper we consider the characterization and recognition problems of graphs that are squares of graphs of small girth, i.e. to determine if G = H2 for some graph H of small girth. The main results are the following. - There is a graph theoretical characterization for graphs that are squares of some graph of girth at least 7. A corollary is that if a graph G has a square root H of girth at least 7 then H is unique up to isomorphism. - There is a polynomial time algorithm to recognize if G = H2 for some graph H of girth at least 6. - It is NP-complete to recognize if G = H2 for some graph H of girth 4. These results almost provide a dichotomy theorem for the complexity of the recognition problem in terms of girth of the square roots. The algorithmic and graph theoretical results generalize previous results on tree square roots, and provide polynomial time algorithms to compute a graph square root of small girth if it exists. Some open questions and conjectures will also be discussed

Sparse square roots.

We show that it can be decided in polynomial time whether a graph of maximum degree 6 has a square root; if a square root exists, then our algorithm finds one with minimum number of edges. We also show that it is FPT to decide whether a connected n-vertex graph has a square root with at most n − 1 + k edges when this problem is parameterized by k. Finally, we give an exact exponential time algorithm for the problem of finding a square root with maximum number of edges

Algorithms for outerplanar graph roots and graph roots of pathwidth at most 2

Deciding whether a given graph has a square root is a classical problem that has been studied extensively both from graph theoretic and from algorithmic perspectives. The problem is NP-complete in general, and consequently substantial effort has been dedicated to deciding whether a given graph has a square root that belongs to a particular graph class. There are both polynomial-time solvable and NP-complete cases, depending on the graph class. We contribute with new results in this direction. Given an arbitrary input graph G, we give polynomial-time algorithms to decide whether G has an outerplanar square root, and whether G has a square root that is of pathwidth at most 2

Constrained Representations of Map Graphs and Half-Squares

The square of a graph H, denoted H^2, is obtained from H by adding new edges between two distinct vertices whenever their distance in H is two. The half-squares of a bipartite graph B=(X,Y,E_B) are the subgraphs of B^2 induced by the color classes X and Y, B^2[X] and B^2[Y]. For a given graph G=(V,E_G), if G=B^2[V] for some bipartite graph B=(V,W,E_B), then B is a representation of G and W is the set of points in B. If in addition B is planar, then G is also called a map graph and B is a witness of G [Chen, Grigni, Papadimitriou. Map graphs. J. ACM49 (2) (2002) 127-138]. While Chen, Grigni, Papadimitriou proved that any map graph G=(V,E_G) has a witness with at most 3|V|-6 points, we show that, given a map graph G and an integer k, deciding if G admits a witness with at most k points is NP-complete. As a by-product, we obtain NP-completeness of edge clique partition on planar graphs; until this present paper, the complexity status of edge clique partition for planar graphs was previously unknown. We also consider half-squares of tree-convex bipartite graphs and prove the following complexity dichotomy: Given a graph G=(V,E_G) and an integer k, deciding if G=B^2[V] for some tree-convex bipartite graph B=(V,W,E_B) with |W|<=k points is NP-complete if G is non-chordal dually chordal and solvable in linear time otherwise. Our proof relies on a characterization of half-squares of tree-convex bipartite graphs, saying that these are precisely the chordal and dually chordal graphs