2,351 research outputs found
String graphs and separators
String graphs, that is, intersection graphs of curves in the plane, have been
studied since the 1960s. We provide an expository presentation of several
results, including very recent ones: some string graphs require an exponential
number of crossings in every string representation; exponential number is
always sufficient; string graphs have small separators; and the current best
bound on the crossing number of a graph in terms of the pair-crossing number.
For the existence of small separators, unwrapping the complete proof include
generally useful results on approximate flow-cut dualities.Comment: Expository paper based on course note
Log-space Algorithms for Paths and Matchings in k-trees
Reachability and shortest path problems are NL-complete for general graphs.
They are known to be in L for graphs of tree-width 2 [JT07]. However, for
graphs of tree-width larger than 2, no bound better than NL is known. In this
paper, we improve these bounds for k-trees, where k is a constant. In
particular, the main results of our paper are log-space algorithms for
reachability in directed k-trees, and for computation of shortest and longest
paths in directed acyclic k-trees.
Besides the path problems mentioned above, we also consider the problem of
deciding whether a k-tree has a perfect macthing (decision version), and if so,
finding a perfect match- ing (search version), and prove that these two
problems are L-complete. These problems are known to be in P and in RNC for
general graphs, and in SPL for planar bipartite graphs [DKR08].
Our results settle the complexity of these problems for the class of k-trees.
The results are also applicable for bounded tree-width graphs, when a
tree-decomposition is given as input. The technique central to our algorithms
is a careful implementation of divide-and-conquer approach in log-space, along
with some ideas from [JT07] and [LMR07].Comment: Accepted in STACS 201
Applications of a new separator theorem for string graphs
An intersection graph of curves in the plane is called a string graph.
Matousek almost completely settled a conjecture of the authors by showing that
every string graph of m edges admits a vertex separator of size O(\sqrt{m}\log
m). In the present note, this bound is combined with a result of the authors,
according to which every dense string graph contains a large complete balanced
bipartite graph. Three applications are given concerning string graphs G with n
vertices: (i) if K_t is not a subgraph of G for some t, then the chromatic
number of G is at most (\log n)^{O(\log t)}; (ii) if K_{t,t} is not a subgraph
of G, then G has at most t(\log t)^{O(1)}n edges,; and (iii) a lopsided
Ramsey-type result, which shows that the Erdos-Hajnal conjecture almost holds
for string graphs.Comment: 7 page
Optimality program in segment and string graphs
Planar graphs are known to allow subexponential algorithms running in time
or for most of the paradigmatic
problems, while the brute-force time is very likely to be
asymptotically best on general graphs. Intrigued by an algorithm packing curves
in by Fox and Pach [SODA'11], we investigate which
problems have subexponential algorithms on the intersection graphs of curves
(string graphs) or segments (segment intersection graphs) and which problems
have no such algorithms under the ETH (Exponential Time Hypothesis). Among our
results, we show that, quite surprisingly, 3-Coloring can also be solved in
time on string graphs while an algorithm running
in time for 4-Coloring even on axis-parallel segments (of unbounded
length) would disprove the ETH. For 4-Coloring of unit segments, we show a
weaker ETH lower bound of which exploits the celebrated
Erd\H{o}s-Szekeres theorem. The subexponential running time also carries over
to Min Feedback Vertex Set but not to Min Dominating Set and Min Independent
Dominating Set.Comment: 19 pages, 15 figure
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