Approximation algorithm for finding multipacking on Cactus

Abstract

For a graph $G = (V, E)$ with vertex set $V$ and edge set $E$, a function $f : V \rightarrow \{0, 1, 2, . . . , diam(G)\}$ is called a \emph{broadcast} on $G$. For each vertex $u \in V$, if there exists a vertex $v$ in $G$ (possibly, $u = v$) such that $f (v) > 0$ and $d(u, v) \leq f (v)$, then $f$ is called a \textit{dominating broadcast} on $G$. The \textit{cost} of the dominating broadcast $f$ is the quantity $\sum_{v\in V}f(v)$. The minimum cost of a dominating broadcast is the \textit{broadcast domination number} of $G$, denoted by $\gamma_{b}(G)$. A \textit{multipacking} is a set $S \subseteq V$ in a graph $G = (V, E)$ such that for every vertex $v \in V$ and for every integer $r \geq 1$, the ball of radius $r$ around $v$ contains at most $r$ vertices of $S$, that is, there are at most $r$ vertices in $S$ at a distance at most $r$ from $v$ in $G$. The \textit{multipacking number} of $G$ is the maximum cardinality of a multipacking of $G$ and is denoted by $mp(G)$. We show that, for any cactus graph $G$, $\gamma_b(G)\leq \frac{3}{2}mp(G)+\frac{11}{2}$. We also show that $\gamma_b(G)-mp(G)$ can be arbitrarily large for cactus graphs by constructing an infinite family of cactus graphs such that the ratio $\gamma_b(G)/mp(G)=4/3$, with $mp(G)$ arbitrarily large. This result shows that, for cactus graphs, we cannot improve the bound $\gamma_b(G)\leq \frac{3}{2}mp(G)+\frac{11}{2}$ to a bound in the form $\gamma_b(G)\leq c_1\cdot mp(G)+c_2$, for any constant $c_1<4/3$ and $c_2$. Moreover, we provide an $O(n)$-time algorithm to construct a multipacking of $G$ of size at least $\frac{2}{3}mp(G)-\frac{11}{3}$, where $n$ is the number of vertices of the graph $G$