Graph coloring is a fundamental problem in computer science. We study the fully dynamic version of the problem in which the graph is undergoing edge insertions and deletions and we wish to maintain a vertex-coloring with small update time after each insertion and deletion.
We show how to maintain an $O(α\lg n)$-coloring with polylogarithmic update time, where $n$ is the number of vertices in the graph and $α$ is the current arboricity of the graph. This improves upon a result by Solomon and Wein (ESA'18) who maintained an $O(α_{\max}\lg^2 n)$-coloring, where $α_{\max}$ is the maximum arboricity of the graph over all updates.
Furthermore, motivated by a lower bound by Barba et al. (Algorithmica'19), we initiate the study of implicit dynamic colorings. Barba et al. showed that dynamic algorithms with polylogarithmic update time cannot maintain an $f(α)$-coloring for any function $f$ when the vertex colors are stored explicitly, i.e., for each vertex the color is stored explicitly in the memory. Previously, all dynamic algorithms maintained explicit colorings. Therefore, we propose to study implicit colorings, i.e., the data structure only needs to offer an efficient query procedure to return the color of a vertex (instead of storing its color explicitly). We provide an algorithm which breaks the lower bound and maintains an implicit $2^{O(α)}$-coloring with polylogarithmic update time. In particular, this yields the first dynamic $O(1)$-coloring for graphs with constant arboricity such as planar graphs or graphs with bounded tree-width, which is impossible using explicit colorings.
We also show how to dynamically maintain a partition of the graph's edges into $O(α)$ forests with polylogarithmic update time. We believe this data structure is of independent interest and might have more applications in the future.
In this paper, we initiate the study of the vertex coloring problem of a graph in the semi streaming model. In this model, the input graph is defined by a stream of edges, arriving in adversarial order and any algorithm must process the edges in the order of arrival using space linear (up to polylogarithmic factors) in the number of vertices of the graph. In the offline settings, there is a simple greedy algorithm for $(Δ+1)$-vertex coloring of a graph with maximum degree $Δ$. We design a one pass randomized streaming algorithm for $(1+\varepsilon)Δ$-vertex coloring problem for any constant $\…
In the implicit dynamic colouring problem, the task is to maintain a representation of a proper colouring as a dynamic graph is subject to insertions and deletions of edges, while facilitating interspersed queries to the colours of vertices. The goal is to use few colours, while still efficiently handling edge-updates and responding to colour-queries. For an n-vertex dynamic graph of arboricity $α$, we present an algorithm that maintains an implicit vertex colouring with $4\cdot2^α$ colours, in amortised poly-$(\log n)$ update time, and with $O(α log n)$ worst-case query time. The previous bes…
Graph coloring is one of the central problems in distributed graph algorithms. Much of the research on this topic has focused on coloring with $Δ+1$ colors, where $Δ$ denotes the maximum degree. Using $Δ+1$ colors may be unsatisfactory in sparse graphs, where not all nodes have such a high degree; it would be more desirable to use a number of colors that improves with sparsity. A standard measure that captures sparsity is arboricity, which is the smallest number of forests into which the edges of the graph can be partitioned. We present simple randomized distributed algorithms that, with high …
Given a dynamic graph subject to edge insertions and deletions, we show how to update an implicit representation of a proper vertex colouring, such that colours of vertices are computable upon query time. We give a deterministic algorithm that uses $O(α^2)$ colours for a dynamic graph of arboricity $α$, and a randomised algorithm that uses $O(\min\{α\log α, α\log \log \log n\})$ colours in the oblivious adversary model. Our deterministic algorithm has update- and query times polynomial in $α$ and $\log n$, and our randomised algorithm has amortised update- and query time that with high probabi…
We give improved algorithms for maintaining edge-orientations of a fully-dynamic graph, such that the out-degree of each vertex is bounded. On one hand, we show how to orient the edges such that the out-degree of each vertex is proportional to the arboricity $α$ of the graph, in a worst-case update time of $O(\log^3 n \log α)$. On the other hand, motivated by applications including dynamic maximal matching, we obtain a different trade-off, namely the improved worst case update time of $O(\log ^2 n \log α)$ for the problem of maintaining an edge-orientation with at most $O(α+ \log n)$ out-edges…
We study the problem of coloring a given graph using a small number of colors in several well-established models of computation for big data. These include the data streaming model, the general graph query model, the massively parallel computation (MPC) model, and the CONGESTED-CLIQUE and the LOCAL models of distributed computation. On the one hand, we give algorithms with sublinear complexity, for the appropriate notion of complexity in each of these models. Our algorithms color a graph $G$ using about $κ(G)$ colors, where $κ(G)$ is the degeneracy of $G$: this parameter is closely related to …
We present trade-offs in the incremental and fully dynamic settings to maintian a proper coloring. For any fully dynamic $2$-coloring algorithm, the maximum of the update time, number of recolorings, and query time is $Ω(\log n)$. We present a deterministic fully dynamic $2$-coloring algorithm with $O(\log^2 n)$ amortized update time, $O(\log n)$ amortized query time, and one recoloring in the worst case. For any incremental $2$-coloring algorithm which explicitly maintains the color of every vertex after each update, the amortized update time and the amortized number of recolorings is $Ω(\log…
We present a deterministic distributed algorithm that computes a $(2Δ-1)$-edge-coloring, or even list-edge-coloring, in any $n$-node graph with maximum degree $Δ$, in $O(\log^7 Δ\log n)$ rounds. This answers one of the long-standing open questions of \emph{distributed graph algorithms} from the late 1980s, which asked for a polylogarithmic-time algorithm. See, e.g., Open Problem 4 in the Distributed Graph Coloring book of Barenboim and Elkin. The previous best round complexities were $2^{O(\sqrt{\log n})}$ by Panconesi and Srinivasan [STOC'92] and $\tilde{O}(\sqrtΔ) + O(\log^* n)$ by Fraigniau…
We study a family of closely-related distributed graph problems, which we call degree splitting, where roughly speaking the objective is to partition (or orient) the edges such that each node's degree is split almost uniformly. Our findings lead to answers for a number of problems, a sampling of which includes: -- We present a $poly(\log n)$ round deterministic algorithm for $(2Δ-1)\cdot (1+o(1))$-edge-coloring, where $Δ$ denotes the maximum degree. Modulo the $1+o(1)$ factor, this settles one of the long-standing open problems of the area from the 1990's (see e.g. Panconesi and Srinivasan [PO…
We describe a simple deterministic $O( \varepsilon^{-1} \log Δ)$ round distributed algorithm for $(2α+1)(1 + \varepsilon)$ approximation of minimum weighted dominating set on graphs with arboricity at most $α$. Here $Δ$ denotes the maximum degree. We also show a lower bound proving that this round complexity is nearly optimal even for the unweighted case, via a reduction from the celebrated KMW lower bound on distributed vertex cover approximation [Kuhn, Moscibroda, and Wattenhofer JACM'16]. Our algorithm improves on all the previous results (that work only for unweighted graphs) including a r…
We consider coloring problems in the distributed message-passing setting. The previously-known deterministic algorithms for edge-coloring employed at least (2Delta - 1) colors, even though any graph admits an edge-coloring with Delta + 1 colors [V64]. Moreover, the previously-known deterministic algorithms that employed at most O(Delta) colors required superlogarithmic time [B15,BE10,BE11,FHK15]. In the current paper we devise deterministic edge-coloring algorithms that employ only Delta + o(Delta) colors, for a very wide family of graphs. Specifically, as long as the arboricity is a = O(Delta…
We present a simple deterministic distributed algorithm that computes a $(Δ+1)$-vertex coloring in $O(\log^2 Δ\cdot \log n)$ rounds. The algorithm can be implemented with $O(\log n)$-bit messages. The algorithm can also be extended to the more general $(degree+1)$-list coloring problem. Obtaining a polylogarithmic-time deterministic algorithm for $(Δ+1)$-vertex coloring had remained a central open question in the area of distributed graph algorithms since the 1980s, until a recent network decomposition algorithm of Rozhoň and Ghaffari [STOC'20]. The current state of the art is based on an impr…
The {Congested Clique} is a distributed-computing model for single-hop networks with restricted bandwidth that has been very intensively studied recently. It models a network by an $n$-vertex graph in which any pair of vertices can communicate one with another by transmitting $O(\log n )$ bits in each round. Various problems have been studied in this setting, but for some of them the best-known results are those for general networks. In this paper we devise significantly improved algorithms for various symmetry-breaking problems, such as forests-decompositions, vertex-colorings, and maximal in…
We provide novel deterministic distributed vertex coloring algorithms. As our main result, we give a deterministic distributed algorithm to compute a $(Δ+1)$-coloring of an $n$-node graph with maximum degree $Δ$ in $2^{O(\sqrt{\logΔ})}\cdot\log n$ rounds. This improves on the best previously known time complexity for a large range of values of $Δ$. For graphs with arboricity $a$, we obtain a deterministic distributed algorithm to compute a $(2+o(1))a$-coloring in time $2^{O(\sqrt{\log a})}\cdot\log^2 n$. Further, for graphs with bounded neighborhood independence, we show that a $(Δ+1)$-colorin…
Low-treedepth colorings are an important tool for algorithms that exploit structure in classes of bounded expansion; they guarantee subgraphs that use few colors have bounded treedepth. These colorings have an implicit tradeoff between the total number of colors used and the treedepth bound, and prior empirical work suggests that the former dominates the run time of existing algorithms in practice. We introduce $p$-linear colorings as an alternative to the commonly used $p$-centered colorings. They can be efficiently computed in bounded expansion classes and use at most as many colors as $p$-c…
One of the most important combinatorial optimization problems is graph coloring. There are several variations of this problem involving additional constraints either on vertices or edges. They constitute models for real applications, such as channel assignment in mobile wireless networks. In this work, we consider some coloring problems involving distance constraints as weighted edges, modeling them as distance geometry problems. Thus, the vertices of the graph are considered as embedded on the real line and the coloring is treated as an assignment of positive integers to the vertices, while t…
For a graph $H$ and integer $k \geq 1$, two functions $f, g$ from $V(H)$ into $\{1, \dots, k\}$ are adjacent if for all edges $uv$ of $H$, $f(u) \neq g(v)$. The graph of all such functions is the exponential graph $K_k^H$. El-Zahar and Sauer proved that if $χ(H) \geq 4$, then $K_3^H$ is 3-chromatic. Tardif showed that, implicit in their proof, is an algorithm for 3-coloring $K_3^H$ whose time complexity is polynomial in the size of $K_3^H$. Tardif then asked if there is an "explicit" algorithm for finding such a coloring: Essentially, given a function $f$ belonging to a 3-chromatic component o…
In this paper we present a simple but powerful subgraph sampling primitive that is applicable in a variety of computational models including dynamic graph streams (where the input graph is defined by a sequence of edge/hyperedge insertions and deletions) and distributed systems such as MapReduce. In the case of dynamic graph streams, we use this primitive to prove the following results: -- Matching: First, there exists an $\tilde{O}(k^2)$ space algorithm that returns an exact maximum matching on the assumption the cardinality is at most $k$. The best previous algorithm used $\tilde{O}(kn)$ spa…
The field of dynamic graph algorithms aims at achieving a thorough understanding of real-world networks whose topology evolves with time. Traditionally, the focus has been on the classic sequential, centralized setting where the main quality measure of an algorithm is its update time, i.e. the time needed to restore the solution after each update. While real-life networks are very often distributed across multiple machines, the fundamental question of finding efficient dynamic, distributed graph algorithms received little attention to date. The goal in this setting is to optimize both the roun…
Several implicit methods to infer Horizontal Gene Transfer (HGT) focus on pairs of genes that have diverged only after the divergence of the two species in which the genes reside. This situation defines the edge set of a graph, the later-divergence-time (LDT) graph, whose vertices correspond to genes colored by their species. We investigate these graphs in the setting of relaxed scenarios, i.e., evolutionary scenarios that encompass all commonly used variants of duplication-transfer-loss scenarios in the literature. We characterize LDT graphs as a subclass of properly vertex-colored cographs, …
