Incremental (1-?)-Approximate Dynamic Matching in O(poly(1/?)) Update Time

Abstract

In the dynamic approximate maximum bipartite matching problem we are given bipartite graph G undergoing updates and our goal is to maintain a matching of G which is large compared the maximum matching size ?(G). We define a dynamic matching algorithm to be ? (respectively (?, ?))-approximate if it maintains matching M such that at all times |M | ? ?(G) ? ? (respectively |M| ? ?(G) ? ? - ?). We present the first deterministic (1-?)-approximate dynamic matching algorithm with O(poly(?^{-1})) amortized update time for graphs undergoing edge insertions. Previous solutions either required super-constant [Gupta FSTTCS\u2714, Bhattacharya-Kiss-Saranurak SODA\u2723] or exponential in 1/? [Grandoni-Leonardi-Sankowski-Schwiegelshohn-Solomon SODA\u2719] update time. Our implementation is arguably simpler than the mentioned algorithms and its description is self contained. Moreover, we show that if we allow for additive (1, ??n)-approximation our algorithm seamlessly extends to also handle vertex deletions, on top of edge insertions. This makes our algorithm one of the few small update time algorithms for (1-?)-approximate dynamic matching allowing for updates both increasing and decreasing the maximum matching size of G in a fully dynamic manner. Our algorithm relies on the weighted variant of the celebrated Edge-Degree-Constrained-Subgraph (EDCS) datastructure introduced by [Bernstein-Stein ICALP\u2715]. As far as we are aware we introduce the first application of the weighted-EDCS for arbitrarily dense graphs. We also present a significantly simplified proof for the approximation ratio of weighed-EDCS as a matching sparsifier compared to [Bernstein-Stein], as well as simple descriptions of a fractional matching and fractional vertex cover defined on top of the EDCS. Considering the wide range of applications EDCS has found in settings such as streaming, sub-linear, stochastic and more we hope our techniques will be of independent research interest outside of the dynamic setting