The Connected Vertex Cover problem, where the goal is to compute a minimum set of vertices in a given graph which forms a vertex cover and induces a connected subgraph, is a fundamental combinatorial problem and has received extensive attention in various subdomains of algorithmics. In the area of kernelization, it is known that this problem is unlikely to have efficient preprocessing algorithms, also known as polynomial kernelizations. However, it has been shown in a recent work of Lokshtanov et al. [STOC 2017] that if one considered an appropriate notion of approximate kernelization, then this problem parameterized by the solution size does admit an approximate polynomial kernelization. In fact, Lokhtanov et al. were able to obtain a polynomial size approximate kernelization scheme (PSAKS) for Connected Vertex Cover parameterized by the solution size. A PSAKS is essentially a preprocessing algorithm whose error can be made arbitrarily close to 0. In this paper we revisit this problem, and consider parameters that are strictly smaller than the size of the solution and obtain the first polynomial size approximate kernelization schemes for the Connected Vertex Cover problem when parameterized by the deletion distance of the input graph to the class of cographs, the class of bounded treewidth graphs, and the class of all chordal graphs.
In this paper we show that the problem of identifying an edge $(i,j)$ in a graph $G$ such that there exists an optimal vertex cover $S$ of $G$ containing exactly one of the nodes $i$ and $j$ is NP-hard. Such an edge is called a weak edge. We then develop a polynomial time approximation algorithm for the vertex cover problem with performance guarantee $2-\frac{1}{1+σ}$, where $σ$ is an upper bound on a measure related to a weak edge of a graph. Further, we discuss a new relaxation of the vertex cover problem which is used in our approximation algorithm to obtain smaller values of $σ$. We also o…
This paper presents a fast and simple new 2-approximation algorithm for minimum weighted vertex cover. The unweighted version of this algorithm is equivalent to a well-known greedy maximal independent set algorithm. We prove that this independent set algorithm produces a 2-approximate vertex cover, and we provide a principled new way to generalize it to node-weighted graphs. Our analysis is inspired by connections to a clustering objective called correlation clustering. To demonstrate the relationship between these problems, we show how a simple Pivot algorithm for correlation clustering impli…
This paper proposes a novel branch-and-bound(BMWVC) algorithm to exactly solve the minimum weight vertex cover problem (MWVC) in large graphs. The original contribution is several new graph reduction rules, allowing to reduce a graph G and the time needed to find a minimum weight vertex cover in G. Experiments on large graphs from real-world applications show that the reduction rules are effective and the resulting BMWVC algorithm outperforms relevant exact and heuristic MWVC algorithms.
We give a characterization result for the integrality gap of the natural linear programming relaxation for the vertex cover problem. We show that integrality gap of the standard linear programming relaxation for any graph G equals $\left(2-\frac{2}{χ^f(G)}\right)$ where $χ^f(G)$ denotes the fractional chromatic number of G.
We develop a polynomial time 3/2-approximation algorithm to solve the vertex cover problem on a class of graphs satisfying a property called ``active edge hypothesis''. The algorithm also guarantees an optimal solution on specially structured graphs. Further, we give an extended algorithm which guarantees a vertex cover $S_1$ on an arbitrary graph such that $|S_1|\leq {3/2} |S^*|+ξ$ where $S^*$ is an optimal vertex cover and $ξ$ is an error bound identified by the algorithm. We obtained $ξ= 0$ for all the test problems we have considered which include specially constructed instances that were …
The CONNECTED VERTEX COVER problem asks for a vertex cover in a graph that induces a connected subgraph. The problem is known to be fixed-parameter tractable (FPT), and is unlikely to have a polynomial sized kernel (under complexity theoretic assumptions) when parameterized by the solution size. In a recent paper, Lokshtanov et al.[STOC 2017], have shown an $α$-approximate kernel for the problem for every $α> 1$, in the framework of approximate or lossy kernelization. In this work, we exhibit lossy kernels and FPT algorithms for CONNECTED VERTEX COVER for parameters that are more natural and f…
In any attempt at designing an efficient algorithm for the minimum vertex cover problem, obtaining good upper and lower bounds for the vertex cover number could be crucial. In this article we present a modified greedy algorithm of worst-case time complexity O(n3) to obtain bounds for the vertex cover number of an input graph of order n. Using simple facts, the proposed algorithm computes a lower bound for the vertex cover number. Then using this lower bound it outputs a minimal vertex cover and hence gives an upper bound. The algorithm ensures the output vertex cover is always minimal, which f…
The eternal vertex cover problem is a dynamic variant of the classical vertex cover problem. It is NP-hard to compute the eternal vertex cover number of graphs and known algorithmic results for the problem are very few. This paper presents a linear time recursive algorithm for computing the eternal vertex cover number of cactus graphs. Unlike other graph classes for which polynomial time algorithms for eternal vertex cover number are based on efficient computability of a known lower bound directly derived from minimum vertex cover, we show that it is a certain substructure property that helps …
We study the parameterized complexity of the connected version of the vertex cover problem, where the solution set has to induce a connected subgraph. Although this problem does not admit a polynomial kernel for general graphs (unless NP is a subset of coNP/poly), for planar graphs Guo and Niedermeier [ICALP'08] showed a kernel with at most 14k vertices, subsequently improved by Wang et al. [MFCS'11] to 4k. The constant 4 here is so small that a natural question arises: could it be already an optimal value for this problem? In this paper we answer this quesion in negative: we show a (11/3)k-ve…
We present an $O^*(1.0919^n)$-time algorithm for finding a maximum independent set in an $n$-vertex graph with degree bounded by 3, which improves the previously known algorithm of running time $O^*(1.0977^n)$ by Bourgeois, Escoffier and Paschos [IWPEC 2008]. We also present an $O^*(1.1923^k)$-time algorithm to decide if a graph with degree bounded by 3 has a vertex cover of size $k$, which improves the previously known algorithm of running time $O^*(1.1939^k)$ by Chen, Kanj and Xia [ISAAC 2003]. Two new branching techniques, \emph{branching on a bottle} and \emph{branching on a 4-cycle}, are …
Connected Vertex Cover is one of the classical problems of computer science, already mentioned in the monograph of Garey and Johnson. Although the optimization and decision variants of finding connected vertex covers of minimum size or weight are well studied, surprisingly there is no work on the enumeration or maximum number of minimal connected vertex covers of a graph. In this paper we show that the maximum number of minimal connected vertex covers of a graph is at most 1.8668^n, and these can be enumerated in time O(1.8668^n). For graphs of chordality at most 5, we are able to give a bette…
A famous conjecture of Tuza states that the minimum number of edges needed to cover all the triangles in a graph is at most twice the maximum number of edge-disjoint triangles. This conjecture was couched in a broader setting by Aharoni and Zerbib who proposed a hypergraph version of this conjecture, and also studied its implied fractional versions. We establish the fractional version of the Aharoni-Zerbib conjecture up to lower order terms. Specifically, we give a factor $t/2+ O(\sqrt{t \log t})$ approximation based on LP rounding for an algorithmic version of the hypergraph Turán problem (AH…
We give a parameterized algorithm for weighted vertex cover on graphs with maximum degree 3 whose time complexity is $O^*(1.402^t)$, where $t$ is the minimum size of a vertex cover of the input graph.
Given a graph $G$, the Connected Vertex Cover problem (CVC) asks to find a minimum cardinality vertex cover of $G$ that induces a connected subgraph. In this paper we describe some approaches to solve the CVC problem exactly. First, we give compact mixed-integer extended formulations for CVC: these are the first formulations proposed for this problem, and can be easily adapted to variations of the problem such as Tree Cover. Second, we describe a simple branch and bound algorithm for the CVC problem. Finally, we implement our algorithm and compare its performance against our best formulation: …
For intractable problems on graphs of bounded treewidth, two graph parameters treedepth and vertex cover number have been used to obtain fine-grained complexity results. Although the studies in this direction are successful, we still need a systematic way for further investigations because the graphs of bounded vertex cover number form a rather small subclass of the graphs of bounded treedepth. To fill this gap, we use vertex integrity, which is placed between the two parameters mentioned above. For several graph problems, we generalize fixed-parameter tractability results parameterized by ver…
A pseudoforest is a graph whose connected components have at most one cycle. Let X be a pseudoforest modulator of graph G, i. e. a vertex subset of G such that G-X is a pseudoforest. We show that Vertex Cover admits a polynomial kernel being parameterized by the size of the pseudoforest modulator. In other words, we provide a polynomial time algorithm that for an input graph G and integer k, outputs a graph G' and integer k', such that G' has O(|X|12) vertices and G has a vertex cover of size k if and only if G' has vertex cover of size k'. We complement our findings by proving that there is n…
A 3-path vertex cover in a graph is a vertex subset $C$ such that every path of three vertices contains at least one vertex from $C$. The parameterized 3-path vertex cover problem asks whether a graph has a 3-path vertex cover of size at most $k$. In this paper, we give a kernel of $5k$ vertices and an $O^*(1.7485^k)$-time and polynomial-space algorithm for this problem, both new results improve previous known bounds.
After the number of vertices, Vertex Cover is the largest of the classical graph parameters and has more and more frequently been used as a separate parameter in parameterized problems, including problems that are not directly related to the Vertex Cover. Here we consider the TREEWIDTH and PATHWIDTH problems parameterized by k, the size of a minimum vertex cover of the input graph. We show that the PATHWIDTH and TREEWIDTH can be computed in O*(3^k) time. This complements recent polynomial kernel results for TREEWIDTH and PATHWIDTH parameterized by the Vertex Cover.
We investigate the following above-guarantee parameterization of the classical Vertex Cover problem: Given a graph $G$ and $k\in\mathbb{N}$ as input, does $G$ have a vertex cover of size at most $(2LP-MM)+k$? Here $MM$ is the size of a maximum matching of $G$, $LP$ is the value of an optimum solution to the relaxed (standard) LP for Vertex Cover on $G$, and $k$ is the parameter. Since $(2LP-MM)\geq{LP}\geq{MM}$, this is a stricter parameterization than those---namely, above-$MM$, and above-$LP$---which have been studied so far. We prove that Vertex Cover is fixed-parameter tractable for this s…
Given an input graph G and an integer k, the parameterized K_4-minor cover problem asks whether there is a set S of at most k vertices whose deletion results in a K_4-minor-free graph, or equivalently in a graph of treewidth at most 2. This problem is inspired by two well-studied parameterized vertex deletion problems, Vertex Cover and Feedback Vertex Set, which can also be expressed as Treewidth-t Vertex Deletion problems: t=0 for Vertex Cover and t=1 for Feedback Vertex Set. While a single-exponential FPT algorithm has been known for a long time for \textsc{Vertex Cover}, such an algorithm f…
In the 4-path vertex cover problem, the input is an undirected graph $G$ and an integer $k$. The goal is to decide whether there is a set of vertices $S$ of size at most $k$ such that every path with 4 vertices in $G$ contains at least one vertex of $S$. In this paper we give a parameterized algorithm for 4-path vertex cover whose time complexity is $O^*(2.619^k)$.
Let $vc(G)$, $fvs(G)$ and $oct(G)$, respectively, denote the size of a minimum vertex cover, minimum feedback vertex set and minimum odd cycle transversal in a graph $G$. One can ask, when looking for these sets in a graph, how much bigger might they be if we require that they are independent; that is, what is the price of independence? If $G$ has a vertex cover, feedback vertex set or odd cycle transversal that is an independent set, then we let $ivc(G)$, $ifvs(G)$ or $ioct(G)$, respectively, denote the minimum size of such a set. Similar to a recent study on the price of connectivity (Hartin…
The classical NP-complete problem Vertex Cover requires us to determine whether a graph contains at most $k$ vertices that cover all edges. In spite of its intractability, the problem can be solved in FPT time for parameter $k$ by various techniques. In this paper, we present half a dozen new and simple FPT algorithms for Vertex Cover with respect to parameter $k$. For this purpose, we explore structural properties of vertex covers and use these properties to obtain FPT algorithms by iterative compression, colour coding, and indirect certificating methods. In particular, we show that every gra…
This study considers the (soft) capacitated vertex cover problem in a dynamic setting. This problem generalizes the dynamic model of the vertex cover problem, which has been intensively studied in recent years. Given a dynamically changing vertex-weighted graph $G=(V,E)$, which allows edge insertions and edge deletions, the goal is to design a data structure that maintains an approximate minimum vertex cover while satisfying the capacity constraint of each vertex. That is, when picking a copy of a vertex $v$ in the cover, the number of $v$'s incident edges covered by the copy is up to a given …
In the vertex cover problem, the input is a graph $G$ and an integer $k$, and the goal is to decide whether there is a set of vertices $S$ of size at most $k$ such that every edge of $G$ is incident on at least one vertex in $S$. We study the vertex cover problem on graphs with maximum degree 4 and minimum degree at least 2, parameterized by $r = k-n/3$. We give an algorithm for this problem whose running time is $O^*(1.6253^r)$. As a corollary, we obtain an $O^*(1.2403^k)$-time algorithm for vertex cover on graphs with maximum degree 4.
The question of the existence of a polynomial kernelization of the Vertex Cover Above LP problem has been a longstanding, notorious open problem in Parameterized Complexity. Five years ago, the breakthrough work by Kratsch and Wahlstrom on representative sets has finally answered this question in the affirmative [FOCS 2012]. In this paper, we present an alternative, algebraic compression of the Vertex Cover Above LP problem into the Rank Vertex Cover problem. Here, the input consists of a graph G, a parameter k, and a bijection between V (G) and the set of columns of a representation of a matr…
A vertex subset $I$ of a graph $G$ is called a $k$-path vertex cover if every path on $k$ vertices in $G$ contains at least one vertex from $I$. The \textsc{$k$-Path Vertex Cover Reconfiguration ($k$-PVCR)} problem asks if one can transform one $k$-path vertex cover into another via a sequence of $k$-path vertex covers where each intermediate member is obtained from its predecessor by applying a given reconfiguration rule exactly once. We investigate the computational complexity of \textsc{$k$-PVCR} from the viewpoint of graph classes under the well-known reconfiguration rules: $\mathsf{TS}$, …
In the 3-path vertex cover problem, the input is an undirected graph $G$ and an integer $k$. The goal is to decide whether there is a set of vertices $S$ of size at most $k$ such that every path with 3 vertices in $G$ contains at least one vertex of $S$. In this paper we give parameterized algorithm for 3-path cover whose time complexity is $O^*(1.713^k)$. Our algorithm is faster than previous algorithms for this problem.
We consider the (precedence constrained) Minimum Feedback Arc Set problem with triangle inequalities on the weights, which finds important applications in problems of ranking with inconsistent information. We present a surprising structural insight showing that the problem is a special case of the minimum vertex cover in hypergraphs with edges of size at most 3. This result leads to combinatorial approximation algorithms for the problem and opens the road to studying the problem as a vertex cover problem.
It is a celebrated result in early combinatorics that, in bipartite graphs, the size of maximum matching is equal to the size of a minimum vertex cover. Kőnig's proof of this fact gave an algorithm for finding a minimum vertex cover from a maximum matching. In this paper, we revisit the connection this algorithm induces between the two types of structures. We find that all minimum vertex covers can be found by applying this algorithm to some matching and then classify which matchings give minimum vertex covers when this algorithm is applied to them.
\textproc{Weighted Vertex Cover} is a variation of an extensively studied NP-complete problem, \textproc{Vertex Cover}, in which we are given a graph, $G = (V,E,w)$, where function $w:V \rightarrow \mathbb{Q}^{+}$ and a parameter $k$. The objective is to determine if there exists a vertex cover, $S$, such that $\sum_{v \in S}w(v) \leq k$. In our work, we first study the hardness of \textproc{Weighted Vertex Cover} and then examine this problem under parameterization by $l$ and $k$, where $l$ is the number of vertices with fractional weights. Then, we study the \textproc{Red-Blue Weighted Verte…
It is well-known that the Vertex Cover problem is in P on bipartite graphs, however; the computational complexity of the Partial Vertex Cover problem on bipartite graphs is open. In this paper, we first show that the Partial Vertex Cover problem is NP-hard on bipartite graphs. We then identify an interesting special case of bipartite graphs, for which the Partial Vertex Cover problem can be solved in polynomial-time. We also show that the set of acyclic bipartite graphs, i.e., forests, and the set of bipartite graph where the degree of each vertex is at most 3 fall into that special case. Ther…
The Connected Vertex Cover problem is to decide if a graph G has a vertex cover of size at most $k$ that induces a connected subgraph of $G$. This is a well-studied problem, known to be NP-complete for restricted graph classes, and, in particular, for $H$-free graphs if $H$ is not a linear forest (a graph is $H$-free if it does not contain $H$ as an induced subgraph). It is easy to see that Connected Vertex Cover is polynomial-time solvable for $P_4$-free graphs. We continue the search for tractable graph classes: we prove that it is also polynomial-time solvable for $(sP_1+P_5)$-free graphs f…
In the $l$-path vertex cover problem the input is an undirected graph $G$ and an integer $k$. The goal is to decide whether there is a set of vertices $S$ of size at most $k$ such that $G-S$ does not contain a path with $l$ vertices. In this paper we give parameterized algorithms for $l$-path vertex cover for $l = 5,6,7$, whose time complexities are $O^*(3.945^k)$, $O^*(4.947^k)$, and $O^*(5.951^k)$, respectively.
The problem of finding an optimal vertex cover in a graph is a classic NP-complete problem, and is a special case of the hitting set question. On the other hand, the hitting set problem, when asked in the context of induced geometric objects, often turns out to be exactly the vertex cover problem on restricted classes of graphs. In this work we explore a particular instance of such a phenomenon. We consider the problem of hitting all axis-parallel slabs induced by a point set P, and show that it is equivalent to the problem of finding a vertex cover on a graph whose edge set is the union of tw…
In this paper, we explicitly study the online vertex cover problem, which is a natural generalization of the well-studied ski-rental problem. In the online vertex cover problem, we are required to maintain a monotone vertex cover in a graph whose vertices arrive online. When a vertex arrives, all its incident edges to previously arrived vertices are revealed to the algorithm. For bipartite graphs with the left vertices offline (i.e. all of the left vertices arrive first before any right vertex), there are algorithms achieving the optimal competitive ratio of $\frac{1}{1-1/e}\approx 1.582$. Our…
Graduate School of Information Sciences, Tohoku University（东北大学大学院信息科学研究科）；Faculty of Science and Technology, Keio University（庆应义塾大学理工学部）；Graduate School of Informatics, Kyoto University（京都大学情报学府）；Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Kyoto University（京都大学数理物理学研究所）；Graduate School of Informatics and Engineering, The University of Electro-Communications（电气通信大学情报工学研究科）
We consider a new Steiner tree problem, called vertex-cover-weighted Steiner tree problem. This problem defines the weight of a Steiner tree as the minimum weight of vertex covers in the tree, and seeks a minimum-weight Steiner tree in a given vertex-weighted undirected graph. Since it is included by the Steiner tree activation problem, the problem admits an O(log n)-approximation algorithm in general graphs with n vertices. This approximation factor is tight up to a constant because it is NP-hard to achieve an o(log n)-approximation for the vertex-cover-weighted Steiner tree problem on genera…
Recently, there has been increasing interest and progress in improvising the approximation algorithm for well-known NP-Complete problems, particularly the approximation algorithm for the Vertex-Cover problem. Here we have proposed a polynomial time efficient algorithm for vertex-cover problem for more approximate to the optimal solution, which lead to the worst time complexity ?θ(V 2) and space complexity ?θ(V + E). We show that our proposed method is more approximate with example and theorem proof. Our algorithm also induces improvement on previous algorithms for the independent set problem o…
The intersection graph of a collection of trapezoids with corner points lying on two parallel lines is called a trapezoid graph. Using binary indexed tree data structure, we improve algorithms for calculating the size and the number of minimum vertex covers (or independent sets), as well as the total number of vertex covers, and reduce the time complexity from $O (n^2)$ to $O (n \log n)$, where $n$ is the number of trapezoids. Furthermore, we present the family of counterexamples for recently proposed algorithm with time complexity $O (n^2)$ for calculating the maximum cardinality matching in …
We prove new explicit inapproximability results for the Vertex Cover Problem on the Power Law Graphs and some functional generalizations of that class of graphs. Our results depend on special bounded degree amplifier constructions for those classes of graphs and could be also of independent interest.
The paper presents an algorithm for minimum vertex cover problem, which is an NP-Complete problem. The algorithm computes a minimum vertex cover of each input simple graph. Tested by the attached MATLAB programs, Stage 1 of the algorithm is applicable to, i.e., yields a proved minimum vertex cover for, about 99.99% of the tested 610,000 graphs of order 16 and 99.67% of the tested 1,200 graphs of order 32, and Stage 2 of the algorithm is applicable to all of the above tested graphs. All of the tested graphs are randomly generated graphs of random "edge density" or in other words, random probabi…
The paper describes a simple deterministic parallel/distributed (2+epsilon)-approximation algorithm for the minimum-weight vertex-cover problem and its dual (edge/element packing).
In this paper, we use a new method to decrease the parameterized complexity bound for finding the minimum vertex cover of connected max-degree-3 undirected graphs. The key operation of this method is reduction of the size of a particular subset of edges which we introduce in this paper and is called as "real-cycle" subset. Using "real-cycle" reductions alone we compute a complexity bound $O(1.15855^k)$ where $k$ is size of the optimal vertex cover. Combined with other techniques, the complexity bound can be further improved to be $O(1.1504^k)$. This is currently the best complexity bound.
Our goal in this paper is to propose a \textit{combinatorial algorithm} that beats the only such algorithm known previously, the greedy one. We study the polynomial approximation of the Maximum Vertex Cover Problem in bipartite graphs by a purely combinatorial algorithm and present a computer assisted analysis of it, that finds the worst case approximation guarantee that is bounded below by~0.821.
Our main result is designing an algorithm that returns a vertex cover of $\mathcal{G}^\star$ with size at most $(3/2+ε)$ times the expected size of the minimum vertex cover, using only $O(n/εp)$ non-adaptive queries. This improves over the best-known 2-approximation algorithm by Behnezhad, Blum, and Derakhshan [SODA'22], who also show that $Ω(n/p)$ queries are necessary to achieve any constant approximation. Our guarantees also extend to instances where edge realizations are not fully independent. We complement this upper bound with a tight $3/2$-approximation lower bound for stochastic graphs…
We study the Minimum Sum Vertex Cover problem, which asks for an ordering of vertices in a graph that minimizes the total cover time of edges. In particular, n vertices of the graph are visited according to an ordering, and for each edge this induces the first time it is covered. The goal of the problem is to find the ordering which minimizes the sum of the cover times over all edges in the graph. In this work we give the first explicit hardness of approximation result for Minimum Sum Vertex Cover. In particular, assuming the Unique Games Conjecture, we show that the Minimum Sum Vertex Cover p…
Given a graph and two integers $k$ and $\ell$, Partial Vertex Cover asks for a set of at most $k$ vertices whose deletion results in a graph with at most $\ell$ edges. Based on the expansion lemma, we provide a problem kernel with $(\ell + 2)(k + \ell)$ vertices. We then introduce a new, additive version of the expansion lemma and show it can be used to prove a kernel with $(\ell + 1)(k + \ell)$ vertices for $\ell \ge 1$.
Vertex Cover parameterized by the solution size k is the quintessential fixed-parameter tractable problem. FPT algorithms are most interesting when the parameter is small. Several lower bounds on k are well-known, such as the maximum size of a matching. This has led to a line of research on parameterizations of Vertex Cover by the difference of the solution size k and a lower bound. The most prominent cases for such lower bounds for which the problem is FPT are the matching number or the optimal fractional LP solution. We investigate parameterizations by the difference between k and other grap…
In this work, we provide the first practical evaluation of the structural rounding framework for approximation algorithms. Structural rounding works by first editing to a well-structured class, efficiently solving the edited instance, and "lifting" the partial solution to recover an approximation on the input. We focus on the well-studied Vertex Cover problem, and edit to the class of bipartite graphs (where Vertex Cover has an exact polynomial time algorithm). In addition to the naive lifting strategy for Vertex Cover described by Demaine et al., we introduce a suite of new lifting strategies…
We present the first deterministic data structures for maintaining approximate minimum vertex cover and maximum matching in a fully dynamic graph $G = (V,E)$, with $|V| = n$ and $|E| =m$, in $o(\sqrt{m}\,)$ time per update. In particular, for minimum vertex cover we provide deterministic data structures for maintaining a $(2+\eps)$ approximation in $O(\log n/\eps^2)$ amortized time per update. For maximum matching, we show how to maintain a $(3+\eps)$ approximation in $O(\min(\sqrt{n}/ε, m^{1/3}/\eps^2))$ {\em amortized} time per update, and a $(4+\eps)$ approximation in $O(m^{1/3}/\eps^2)$ {\…
