This paper revisits the classical Edge Disjoint Paths (EDP) problem, where one is given an undirected graph $G$ and a set of terminal pairs $P$ and asks whether $G$ contains a set of pairwise edge-disjoint paths connecting every terminal pair in $P$. Our aim is to identify structural properties (parameters) of graphs which allow the efficient solution of EDP without restricting the placement of terminals in $P$ in any way. In this setting, EDP is known to remain NP-hard even on extremely restricted graph classes, such as graphs with a vertex cover of size $3$.
We present three results which use edge-separator based parameters to chart new islands of tractability in the complexity landscape of EDP. Our first and main result utilizes the fairly recent structural parameter treecut width (a parameter with fundamental ties to graph immersions and graph cuts): we obtain a polynomial-time algorithm for EDP on every graph class of bounded treecut width. Our second result shows that EDP parameterized by treecut width is unlikely to be fixed-parameter tractable. Our final, third result is a polynomial kernel for EDP parameterized by the size of a minimum feedback edge set in the graph.
Since 1997 there has been a steady stream of advances for the maximum disjoint paths problem. Achieving tractable results has usually required focusing on relaxations such as: (i) to allow some bounded edge congestion in solutions, (ii) to only consider the unit weight (cardinality) setting, (iii) to only require fractional routability of the selected demands (the all-or-nothing flow setting). For the general form (no congestion, general weights, integral routing) of edge-disjoint paths ({\sc edp}) even the case of unit capacity trees which are stars generalizes the maximum matching problem fo…
We devise a constant-factor approximation algorithm for the maximization version of the edge-disjoint paths problem if the supply graph together with the demand edges form a planar graph. By planar duality this is equivalent to packing cuts in a planar graph such that each cut contains exactly one demand edge. We also show that the natural linear programming relaxations have constant integrality gap, yielding an approximate max-multiflow min-multicut theorem.
Let G be a graph with minimum degree $δ$. It is well-known that maximal adjacency orderings (MAOs) compute a vertex set S such that every pair of S is connected by at least $δ$ internally vertex-disjoint paths in G. We present an algorithm that, given any pair of S, computes these $δ$ paths in linear time O(n+m). This improves the previously best solutions for these special vertex pairs, which were flow-based. Our algorithm simplifies a proof about pendant pairs of Mader and makes a purely existential proof of Nagamochi algorithmic.
We give query-efficient algorithms for the global min-cut and the s-t cut problem in unweighted, undirected graphs. Our oracle model is inspired by the submodular function minimization problem: on query $S \subset V$, the oracle returns the size of the cut between $S$ and $V \setminus S$. We provide algorithms computing an exact minimum $s$-$t$ cut in $G$ with $\tilde{O}(n^{5/3})$ queries, and computing an exact global minimum cut of $G$ with only $\tilde{O}(n)$ queries (while learning the graph requires $\tildeΘ(n^2)$ queries).
We study the problem of computing an ensemble of multiple sums where the summands in each sum are indexed by subsets of size $p$ of an $n$-element ground set. More precisely, the task is to compute, for each subset of size $q$ of the ground set, the sum over the values of all subsets of size $p$ that are disjoint from the subset of size $q$. We present an arithmetic circuit that, without subtraction, solves the problem using $O((n^p+n^q)\log n)$ arithmetic gates, all monotone; for constant $p$, $q$ this is within the factor $\log n$ of the optimal. The circuit design is based on viewing the su…
We give O(log^2 n)-approximation algorithm based on the cut-matching framework of [10, 13, 14] for computing the sparsest cut on directed graphs. Our algorithm uses only O(log^2 n) single commodity max-flow computations and thus breaks the multicommodity-flow barrier for computing the sparsest cut on directed graphs
The classical Menger's theorem states that in any undirected (or directed) graph $G$, given a pair of vertices $s$ and $t$, the maximum number of vertex (edge) disjoint paths is equal to the minimum number of vertices (edges) needed to disconnect from $s$ and $t$. This min-max result can be turned into a polynomial time algorithm to find the maximum number of vertex (edge) disjoint paths as well as the minimum number of vertices (edges) needed to disconnect $s$ from $t$. In this paper we study a mixed version of this problem, called Mixed-Cut, where we are given an undirected graph $G$, vertic…
For a given graph $G$ with positive integral cost and delay on edges, distinct vertices $s$ and $t$, cost bound $C\in Z^{+}$ and delay bound $D\in Z^{+}$, the $k$ bi-constraint path ($k$BCP) problem is to compute $k$ disjoint $st$-paths subject to $C$ and $D$. This problem is known NP-hard, even when $k=1$ \cite{garey1979computers}. This paper first gives a simple approximation algorithm with factor-$(2,2)$, i.e. the algorithm computes a solution with delay and cost bounded by $2*D$ and $2*C$ respectively. Later, a novel improved approximation algorithm with ratio $(1+β,\,\max\{2,\,1+\ln\frac{…
We study algorithmic and structural aspects of connectivity in hypergraphs. Given a hypergraph $H=(V,E)$ with $n = |V|$, $m = |E|$ and $p = \sum_{e \in E} |e|$ the best known algorithm to compute a global minimum cut in $H$ runs in time $O(np)$ for the uncapacitated case and in $O(np + n^2 \log n)$ time for the capacitated case. We show the following new results. 1. Given an uncapacitated hypergraph $H$ and an integer $k$ we describe an algorithm that runs in $O(p)$ time to find a subhypergraph $H'$ with sum of degrees $O(kn)$ that preserves all edge-connectivities up to $k$ (a $k$-sparsifier)…
While the notion of arboricity of a graph is well-known in graph theory, very few results are dedicated to the minimal number of trees covering the edges of a graph, called the tree number of a graph.
In the bounded-degree cut problem, we are given a multigraph $G=(V,E)$, two disjoint vertex subsets $A,B\subseteq V$, two functions $\mathrm{u}_A, \mathrm{u}_B:V\to \{0,1,\ldots,|E|\}$ on $V$, and an integer $k\geq 0$. The task is to determine whether there is a minimal $(A,B)$-cut $(V_A,V_B)$ of size at most $k$ such that the degree of each vertex $v\in V_A$ in the induced subgraph $G[V_A]$ is at most $\mathrm{u}_A(v)$ and the degree of each vertex $v\in V_B$ in the induced subgraph $G[V_B]$ is at most $\mathrm{u}_B(v)$. In this paper, we show that the bounded-degree cut problem is fixed-para…
We consider high dimensional variants of the maximum flow and minimum cut problems in the setting of simplicial complexes and provide both algorithmic and hardness results. By viewing flows and cuts topologically in terms of the simplicial (co)boundary operator we can state these problems as linear programs and show that they are dual to one another. Unlike graphs, complexes with integral capacity constraints may have fractional max-flows. We show that computing a maximum integral flow is NP-hard. Moreover, we give a combinatorial definition of a simplicial cut that seems more natural in the c…
We present the first linear-time algorithm that computes the $4$-edge-connected components of an undirected graph. Hence, we also obtain the first linear-time algorithm for testing $4$-edge connectivity. Our results are based on a linear-time algorithm that computes the $3$-edge cuts of a $3$-edge-connected graph $G$, and a linear-time procedure that, given the collection of all $3$-edge cuts, partitions the vertices of $G$ into the $4$-edge-connected components.
We introduce and study Weighted Min $(s,t)$-Cut Prevention, where we are given a graph $G=(V,E)$ with vertices $s$ and $t$ and an edge cost function and the aim is to choose an edge set $D$ of total cost at most $d$ such that $G$ has no $(s,t)$-edge cut of capacity at most $a$ that is disjoint from $D$. We show that Weighted Min $(s,t)$-Cut Prevention is NP-hard even on subcubcic graphs when all edges have capacity and cost one and provide a comprehensive study of the parameterized complexity of the problem. We show, for example W[1]-hardness with respect to $d$ and an FPT algorithm for $a$.
Let $(G,T)$ be an instance of the (vertex) multiway cut problem where $G$ is a graph and $T$ is a set of terminals. For $t \in T$, a set of nonterminal vertices separating $t$ from $T \setminus \{T\}$ is called an \emph{isolating cut} of $t$. The largest among all the smallest isolating cuts is a natural lower bound for a multiway cut of $(G,T)$. Denote this lower bound by $m$ and let $k$ be an integer. In this paper we propose an $O(kn^{k+3})$ algorithm that computes a multiway cut of $(G,T)$ of size at most $m+k$ or reports that there is no such multiway cut. The core of the proposed algorit…
In this paper we consider two special cases of the "cover-by-pairs" optimization problem that arise when we need to place facilities so that each customer is served by two facilities that reach it by disjoint shortest paths. These problems arise in a network traffic monitoring scheme proposed by Breslau et al. and have potential applications to content distribution. The "set-disjoint" variant applies to networks that use the OSPF routing protocol, and the "path-disjoint" variant applies when MPLS routing is enabled, making better solutions possible at the cost of greater operational expense. A…
Consider the following "local" cut-detection problem in a directed graph: We are given a seed vertex $x$ and need to remove at most $k$ edges so that at most $ν$ edges can be reached from $x$ (a "local" cut) or output $\bot$ to indicate that no such cut exists. If we are given query access to the input graph, then this problem can in principle be solved without reading the whole graph and with query complexity depending on $k$ and $ν$. In this paper we consider a slack variant of this problem where, when such a cut exists, we can output a cut with up to $O(kν)$ edges reachable from $x$. We pre…
We give an $O(n \log \log n)$ time algorithm for computing the minimum cut (or equivalently, the shortest cycle) of a weighted directed planar graph. This improves the previous fastest $O(n\log^3 n)$ solution. Interestingly, while in undirected planar graphs both min-cut and min $st$-cut have $O(n \log \log n)$ solutions, in directed planar graphs our result makes min-cut faster than min $st$-cut, which currently requires $O(n \log n)$.
Let $G$ be a directed graph with $n$ vertices, $m$ edges, and non-negative edge costs. Given $G$, a fixed source vertex $s$, and a positive integer $p$, we consider the problem of computing, for each vertex $t\neq s$, $p$ edge-disjoint paths of minimum total cost from $s$ to $t$ in $G$. Suurballe and Tarjan~[Networks, 1984] solved the above problem for $p=2$ by designing a $O(m+n\log n)$ time algorithm which also computes a sparse \emph{single-source $2$-multipath preserver}, i.e., a subgraph containing $2$ edge-disjoint paths of minimum total cost from $s$ to every other vertex of $G$. The ca…
The parameterized complexity of counting minimum cuts stands as a natural question because Ball and Provan showed its #P-completeness. For any undirected graph $G=(V,E)$ and two disjoint sets of its vertices $S,T$, we design a fixed-parameter tractable algorithm which counts minimum edge $(S,T)$-cuts parameterized by their size $p$. Our algorithm operates on a transformed graph instance. This transformation, called drainage, reveals a collection of at most $n=\left| V \right|$ successive minimum $(S,T)$-cuts $Z_i$. We prove that any minimum $(S,T)$-cut $X$ contains edges of at least one cut $Z…
We consider the Minimum Steiner Cut problem on undirected planar graphs with non-negative edge weights. This problem involves finding the minimum cut of the graph that separates a specified subset $X$ of vertices (terminals) into two parts. This problem is of theoretical interest because it generalizes two classical optimization problems, Minimum $s$-$t$ Cut and Minimum Cut, and of practical importance because of its application to computing a lower bound for Steiner (Subset) TSP. Our algorithm has running time $O(n\log{n}\log{k})$ where $k$ is the number of terminals.
The cut-set $\partial(S)$ of a graph $G=(V,E)$ is the set of edges that have one endpoint in $S\subset V$ and the other endpoint in $V\setminus S$, and whenever $G[S]$ is connected, the cut $[S,V\setminus S]$ of $G$ is called a connected cut. A bond of a graph $G$ is an inclusion-wise minimal disconnecting set of $G$, i.e., bonds are cut-sets that determine cuts $[S,V\setminus S]$ of $G$ such that $G[S]$ and $G[V\setminus S]$ are both connected. Contrasting with a large number of studies related to maximum cuts, there exist very few results regarding the largest bond of general graphs. In this…
In this paper we consider the directed path-width and directed tree-width of recursively defined digraphs. As an important combinatorial tool, we show how the directed path-width and the directed tree-width can be computed for the disjoint union, order composition, directed union, and series composition of two directed graphs. These results imply the equality of directed path-width and directed tree-width for all digraphs which can be defined by these four operations. This allows us to show a linear-time solution for computing the directed path-width and directed tree-width of all these digrap…
We consider decomposing a 3-connected planar graph $G$ using laminar separators of size three. We show how to find a maximal set of laminar 3-separators in such a graph in linear time. We also discuss how to find maximal laminar set of 3-separators from special families. For example we discuss non-trivial cuts, ie. cuts which split $G$ into two components of size at least two. For any vertex $v$, we also show how to find a maximal set of 3-separators disjoint from $v$ which are laminar and satisfy: every vertex in a separator $X$ has two neighbours not in the unique component of $G-X$ containi…
A bond of a graph $G$ is an inclusion-wise minimal disconnecting set of $G$, i.e., bonds are cut-sets that determine cuts $[S,V\setminus S]$ of $G$ such that $G[S]$ and $G[V\setminus S]$ are both connected. Given $s,t\in V(G)$, an $st$-bond of $G$ is a bond whose removal disconnects $s$ and $t$. Contrasting with the large number of studies related to maximum cuts, there are very few results regarding the largest bond of general graphs. In this paper, we aim to reduce this gap on the complexity of computing the largest bond and the largest $st$-bond of a graph. Although cuts and bonds are simil…
Consider an undirected graph $G = (VG, EG)$ and a set of six \emph{terminals} $T = \set{s_1, s_2, s_3, t_1, t_2, t_3} \subseteq VG$. The goal is to find a collection $\calP$ of three edge-disjoint paths $P_1$, $P_2$, and $P_3$, where $P_i$ connects nodes $s_i$ and $t_i$ ($i = 1, 2, 3$). Results obtained by Robertson and Seymour by graph minor techniques imply a polynomial time solvability of this problem. The time bound of their algorithm is $O(m^3)$ (hereinafter we assume $n := \abs{VG}$, $m := \abs{EG}$, $n = O(m)$). In this paper we consider a special, \emph{Eulerian} case of $G$ and $T$. N…
We study the k-route cut problem: given an undirected edge-weighted graph G=(V,E), a collection {(s_1,t_1),(s_2,t_2),...,(s_r,t_r)} of source-sink pairs, and an integer connectivity requirement k, the goal is to find a minimum-weight subset E' of edges to remove, such that the connectivity of every pair (s_i, t_i) falls below k. Specifically, in the edge-connectivity version, EC-kRC, the requirement is that there are at most (k-1) edge-disjoint paths connecting s_i to t_i in G \ E', while in the vertex-connectivity version, NC-kRC, the same requirement is for vertex-disjoint paths. Prior to ou…
Cut games are among the most fundamental strategic games in algorithmic game theory. It is well-known that computing an exact pure Nash equilibrium in these games is PLS-hard, so research has focused on computing approximate equilibria. We present a polynomial-time algorithm that computes $2.7371$-approximate pure Nash equilibria in cut games. This is the first improvement to the previously best-known bound of $3$, due to the work of Bhalgat, Chakraborty, and Khanna from EC 2010. Our algorithm is based on a general recipe proposed by Caragiannis, Fanelli, Gravin, and Skopalik from FOCS 2011 an…
In this work, we give a structural lemma on merges of typical sequences, a notion that was introduced in 1991 [Lagergren and Arnborg, Bodlaender and Kloks, both ICALP 1991] to obtain constructive linear time parameterized algorithms for treewidth and pathwidth. The lemma addresses a runtime bottleneck in those algorithms but so far it does not lead to asymptotically faster algorithms. However, we apply the lemma to show that the cutwidth and the modified cutwidth of series parallel digraphs can be computed in $\mathcal{O}(n^2)$ time.
Computing the smallest number $q$ such that the vertices of a given graph can be properly $q$-colored is one of the oldest and most fundamental problems in combinatorial optimization. The $q$-Coloring problem has been studied intensively using the framework of parameterized algorithmics, resulting in a very good understanding of the best-possible algorithms for several parameterizations based on the structure of the graph. While there is an abundance of work for parameterizations based on decompositions of the graph by vertex separators, almost nothing is known about parameterizations based on…
Consider the following gap cycle counting problem in the streaming model: The edges of a $2$-regular $n$-vertex graph $G$ are arriving one-by-one in a stream and we are promised that $G$ is a disjoint union of either $k$-cycles or $2k$-cycles for some small $k$; the goal is to distinguish between these two cases. Verbin and Yu [SODA 2011] introduced this problem and showed that any single-pass streaming algorithm solving it requires $n^{1-Ω(\frac{1}{k})}$ space. This result and the technique behind it -- the Boolean Hidden Hypermatching communication problem -- has since been used extensively …
