Farey Graphs as Models for Complex Networks

Farey sequences of irreducible fractions between 0 and 1 can be related to graph constructions known as Farey graphs. These graphs were first introduced by Matula and Kornerup in 1979 and further studied by Colbourn in 1982 and they have many interesting properties: they are minimally 3-colorable, uniquely Hamiltonian, maximally outerplanar and perfect. In this paper we introduce a simple generation method for a Farey graph family, and we study analytically relevant topological properties: order, size, degree distribution and correlation, clustering, transitivity, diameter and average distance. We show that the graphs are a good model for networks associated with some complex systems.Comment: Definitive version published in Theoretical Computer Scienc

Recognizing Graph Theoretic Properties with Polynomial Ideals

Many hard combinatorial problems can be modeled by a system of polynomial equations. N. Alon coined the term polynomial method to describe the use of nonlinear polynomials when solving combinatorial problems. We continue the exploration of the polynomial method and show how the algorithmic theory of polynomial ideals can be used to detect k-colorability, unique Hamiltonicity, and automorphism rigidity of graphs. Our techniques are diverse and involve Nullstellensatz certificates, linear algebra over finite fields, Groebner bases, toric algebra, convex programming, and real algebraic geometry.Comment: 20 pages, 3 figure

Determinant Sums for Undirected Hamiltonicity

We present a Monte Carlo algorithm for Hamiltonicity detection in an $n$-vertex undirected graph running in $O^*(1.657^{n})$ time. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first superpolynomial improvement on the worst case runtime for the problem since the $O^*(2^n)$ bound established for TSP almost fifty years ago (Bellman 1962, Held and Karp 1962). It answers in part the first open problem in Woeginger's 2003 survey on exact algorithms for NP-hard problems. For bipartite graphs, we improve the bound to $O^*(1.414^{n})$ time. Both the bipartite and the general algorithm can be implemented to use space polynomial in $n$. We combine several recently resurrected ideas to get the results. Our main technical contribution is a new reduction inspired by the algebraic sieving method for $k$-Path (Koutis ICALP 2008, Williams IPL 2009). We introduce the Labeled Cycle Cover Sum in which we are set to count weighted arc labeled cycle covers over a finite field of characteristic two. We reduce Hamiltonicity to Labeled Cycle Cover Sum and apply the determinant summation technique for Exact Set Covers (Bj\"orklund STACS 2010) to evaluate it.Comment: To appear at IEEE FOCS 201