146 research outputs found
The Complexity of Change
Many combinatorial problems can be formulated as "Can I transform
configuration 1 into configuration 2, if certain transformations only are
allowed?". An example of such a question is: given two k-colourings of a graph,
can I transform the first k-colouring into the second one, by recolouring one
vertex at a time, and always maintaining a proper k-colouring? Another example
is: given two solutions of a SAT-instance, can I transform the first solution
into the second one, by changing the truth value one variable at a time, and
always maintaining a solution of the SAT-instance? Other examples can be found
in many classical puzzles, such as the 15-Puzzle and Rubik's Cube.
In this survey we shall give an overview of some older and more recent work
on this type of problem. The emphasis will be on the computational complexity
of the problems: how hard is it to decide if a certain transformation is
possible or not?Comment: 28 pages, 6 figure
Distinguishing graphs by their left and right homomorphism profiles
We introduce a new property of graphs called ‘q-state Potts unique-ness’ and relate it to chromatic and Tutte
uniqueness, and also to ‘chromatic–flow uniqueness’, recently studied by Duan, Wu and Yu.
We establish for which edge-weighted graphs H homomor-phism functions from multigraphs G to H are
specializations of the Tutte polynomial of G, in particular answering a question of Freed-man, Lovász and
Schrijver. We also determine for which edge-weighted graphs H homomorphism functions from
multigraphs G to H are specializations of the ‘edge elimination polynomial’ of Averbouch, Godlin and
Makowsky and the ‘induced subgraph poly-nomial’ of Tittmann, Averbouch and Makowsky.
Unifying the study of these and related problems is the notion of the left and right homomorphism profiles
of a graph.Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia MTM2008-05866-C03-01Junta de Andalucía FQM- 0164Junta de Andalucía P06-FQM-0164
Defective and Clustered Graph Colouring
Consider the following two ways to colour the vertices of a graph where the
requirement that adjacent vertices get distinct colours is relaxed. A colouring
has "defect" if each monochromatic component has maximum degree at most
. A colouring has "clustering" if each monochromatic component has at
most vertices. This paper surveys research on these types of colourings,
where the first priority is to minimise the number of colours, with small
defect or small clustering as a secondary goal. List colouring variants are
also considered. The following graph classes are studied: outerplanar graphs,
planar graphs, graphs embeddable in surfaces, graphs with given maximum degree,
graphs with given maximum average degree, graphs excluding a given subgraph,
graphs with linear crossing number, linklessly or knotlessly embeddable graphs,
graphs with given Colin de Verdi\`ere parameter, graphs with given
circumference, graphs excluding a fixed graph as an immersion, graphs with
given thickness, graphs with given stack- or queue-number, graphs excluding
as a minor, graphs excluding as a minor, and graphs excluding
an arbitrary graph as a minor. Several open problems are discussed.Comment: This is a preliminary version of a dynamic survey to be published in
the Electronic Journal of Combinatoric
Counting Subgraphs in Somewhere Dense Graphs
We study the problems of counting copies and induced copies of a small
pattern graph in a large host graph . Recent work fully classified the
complexity of those problems according to structural restrictions on the
patterns . In this work, we address the more challenging task of analysing
the complexity for restricted patterns and restricted hosts. Specifically we
ask which families of allowed patterns and hosts imply fixed-parameter
tractability, i.e., the existence of an algorithm running in time for some computable function . Our main results present
exhaustive and explicit complexity classifications for families that satisfy
natural closure properties. Among others, we identify the problems of counting
small matchings and independent sets in subgraph-closed graph classes
as our central objects of study and establish the following crisp
dichotomies as consequences of the Exponential Time Hypothesis: (1) Counting
-matchings in a graph is fixed-parameter tractable if and
only if is nowhere dense. (2) Counting -independent sets in a
graph is fixed-parameter tractable if and only if
is nowhere dense. Moreover, we obtain almost tight conditional
lower bounds if is somewhere dense, i.e., not nowhere dense.
These base cases of our classifications subsume a wide variety of previous
results on the matching and independent set problem, such as counting
-matchings in bipartite graphs (Curticapean, Marx; FOCS 14), in
-colourable graphs (Roth, Wellnitz; SODA 20), and in degenerate graphs
(Bressan, Roth; FOCS 21), as well as counting -independent sets in bipartite
graphs (Curticapean et al.; Algorithmica 19).Comment: 35 pages, 3 figures, 4 tables, abstract shortened due to ArXiv
requirement
Algebraic Methods in the Congested Clique
In this work, we use algebraic methods for studying distance computation and
subgraph detection tasks in the congested clique model. Specifically, we adapt
parallel matrix multiplication implementations to the congested clique,
obtaining an round matrix multiplication algorithm, where
is the exponent of matrix multiplication. In conjunction
with known techniques from centralised algorithmics, this gives significant
improvements over previous best upper bounds in the congested clique model. The
highlight results include:
-- triangle and 4-cycle counting in rounds, improving upon the
triangle detection algorithm of Dolev et al. [DISC 2012],
-- a -approximation of all-pairs shortest paths in
rounds, improving upon the -round -approximation algorithm of Nanongkai [STOC 2014], and
-- computing the girth in rounds, which is the first
non-trivial solution in this model.
In addition, we present a novel constant-round combinatorial algorithm for
detecting 4-cycles.Comment: This is work is a merger of arxiv:1412.2109 and arxiv:1412.266
Improved bounds for the number of forests and acyclic orientations in the square lattice
In a recent paper Merino and Welsh (1999) studied several counting problems on the square lattice . The authors gave the following bounds for the asymptotics of , the number of forests of , and , the number of acyclic orientations of : and .
In this paper we improve these bounds as follows: and . We obtain this by developing a method for computing the Tutte polynomial of the square lattice and other related graphs based on transfer matrices
08201 Abstracts Collection -- Design and Analysis of Randomized and Approximation Algorithms
From 11.05.08 to 16.05.08, the Dagstuhl Seminar 08201
``Design and Analysis of Randomized and Approximation Algorithms\u27\u27
was held in the International Conference and Research Center (IBFI),
Schloss Dagstuhl.
During the seminar, several participants presented their current
research work, and ongoing work and open problems were discussed.
Abstracts of the presentations which were given during the seminar as well as
abstracts of seminar results and ideas are put together in this paper.
The first section describes the seminar topics and goals in general.
Links to extended abstracts or full paper are provided, if available
Mixing Times of Markov Chains on Degree Constrained Orientations of Planar Graphs
We study Markov chains for -orientations of plane graphs, these are
orientations where the outdegree of each vertex is prescribed by the value of a
given function . The set of -orientations of a plane graph has
a natural distributive lattice structure. The moves of the up-down Markov chain
on this distributive lattice corresponds to reversals of directed facial cycles
in the -orientation. We have a positive and several negative results
regarding the mixing time of such Markov chains.
A 2-orientation of a plane quadrangulation is an orientation where every
inner vertex has outdegree 2. We show that there is a class of plane
quadrangulations such that the up-down Markov chain on the 2-orientations of
these quadrangulations is slowly mixing. On the other hand the chain is rapidly
mixing on 2-orientations of quadrangulations with maximum degree at most 4.
Regarding examples for slow mixing we also revisit the case of 3-orientations
of triangulations which has been studied before by Miracle et al.. Our examples
for slow mixing are simpler and have a smaller maximum degree, Finally we
present the first example of a function and a class of plane
triangulations of constant maximum degree such that the up-down Markov chain on
the -orientations of these graphs is slowly mixing
Acyclic homomorphisms to stars of graph Cartesian products and chordal bipartite graphs
AbstractHomomorphisms to a given graph H (H-colourings) are considered in the literature among other graph colouring concepts. We restrict our attention to a special class of H-colourings, namely H is assumed to be a star. Our additional requirement is that the set of vertices of a graph G mapped into the central vertex of the star and any other colour class induce in G an acyclic subgraph. We investigate the existence of such a homomorphism to a star of given order. The complexity of this problem is studied. Moreover, the smallest order of a star for which a homomorphism of a given graph G with desired features exists is considered. Some exact values and many bounds of this number for chordal bipartite graphs, cylinders, grids, in particular hypercubes, are given. As an application of these results, we obtain some bounds on the cardinality of the minimum feedback vertex set for specified graph classes
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