We develop an algorithmic framework for graph colouring that reduces the problem to verifying a local probabilistic property of the independent sets.
With this we give, for any fixed $k\ge 3$ and $\varepsilon>0$, a randomised polynomial-time algorithm for colouring graphs of maximum degree $Δ$ in which each vertex is contained in at most $t$ copies of a cycle of length $k$, where $1/2\le t\le Δ^\frac{2\varepsilon}{1+2\varepsilon}/(\logΔ)^2$, with $\lfloor(1+\varepsilon)Δ/\log(Δ/\sqrt t)\rfloor$ colours.
This generalises and improves upon several notable results including those of Kim (1995) and Alon, Krivelevich and Sudakov (1999), and more recent ones of Molloy (2019) and Achlioptas, Iliopoulos and Sinclair (2019). This bound on the chromatic number is tight up to an asymptotic factor $2$ and it coincides with a famous algorithmic barrier to colouring random graphs.
This chapter presents an introduction to graph colouring algorithms. The focus is on vertex-colouring algorithms that work for general classes of graphs with worst-case performance guarantees in a sequential model of computation. The presentation aims to demonstrate the breadth of available techniques and is organized by algorithmic paradigm.
Biclique-colouring is a colouring of the vertices of a graph in such a way that no maximal complete bipartite subgraph with at least one edge is monochromatic. We show that it is coNP-complete to check whether a given function that associates a colour to each vertex is a biclique-colouring, a result that justifies the search for structured classes where the biclique-colouring problem could be efficiently solved. We consider biclique-colouring restricted to powers of paths and powers of cycles. We determine the biclique-chromatic number of powers of paths and powers of cycles. The biclique-chro…
A colouring of a graph $G=(V,E)$ is a mapping $c\colon V\to \{1,2,\ldots\}$ such that $c(u)\neq c(v)$ for every two adjacent vertices $u$ and $v$ of $G$. The {\sc List $k$-Colouring} problem is to decide whether a graph $G=(V,E)$ with a list $L(u)\subseteq \{1,\ldots,k\}$ for each $u\in V$ has a colouring $c$ such that $c(u)\in L(u)$ for every $u\in V$. Let $P_t$ be the path on $t$ vertices and let $K_{1,s}^1$ be the graph obtained from the $(s+1)$-vertex star $K_{1,s}$ by subdividing each of its edges exactly once.Recently, Chudnovsky, Spirkl and Zhong (DM 2020) proved that List $3$-Colouring…
Let $G$ be a simple undirected graph on $n$ vertices with maximum degree~$Δ$. Brooks' Theorem states that $G$ has a $Δ$-colouring unless~$G$ is a complete graph, or a cycle with an odd number of vertices. To recolour $G$ is to obtain a new proper colouring by changing the colour of one vertex. We show an analogue of Brooks' Theorem by proving that from any $k$-colouring, $k>Δ$, a $Δ$-colouring of $G$ can be obtained by a sequence of $O(n^2)$ recolourings using only the original $k$ colours unless $G$ is a complete graph or a cycle with an odd number of vertices, or $k=Δ+1$, $G$ is $Δ$-regular …
Recent developments in approximate counting have made startling progress in developing fast algorithmic methods for approximating the number of solutions to constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs) with large arities, using connections to the Lovasz Local Lemma. Nevertheless, the boundaries of these methods for CSPs with non-Boolean domain are not well-understood. Our goal in this paper is to fill in this gap and obtain strong inapproximability results by studying the prototypical problem in this class of CSPs, hypergraph colourings. More precisely, we focus on the problem of approximately coun…
A homomorphism $f$ from a guest graph $G$ to a host graph $H$ is locally bijective, injective or surjective if for every $u\in V(G)$, the restriction of $f$ to the neighbourhood of $u$ is bijective, injective or surjective, respectively. The corresponding decision problems, LBHOM, LIHOM and LSHOM, are well studied both on general graphs and on special graph classes. Apart from complexity results when the problems are parameterized by the treewidth and maximum degree of the guest graph, the three problems still lack a thorough study of their parameterized complexity. This paper fills this gap: …
The anti-Ramsey number, $ar(G, H)$ is the minimum integer $k$ such that in any edge colouring of $G$ with $k$ colours there is a rainbow subgraph isomorphic to $H$, i.e., a copy of $H$ with each of its edges assigned a different colour. The notion was introduced by Erd{ö}s and Simonovits in 1973. Since then the parameter has been studied extensively in combinatorics, also the particular case when $H$ is a star graph. Recently this case received the attention of researchers from the algorithm community because of its applications in interface modelling of wireless networks. To the algorithm com…
An intersection digraph is a digraph where every vertex $v$ is represented by an ordered pair $(S_v, T_v)$ of sets such that there is an edge from $v$ to $w$ if and only if $S_v$ and $T_w$ intersect. An intersection digraph is reflexive if $S_v\cap T_v\neq \emptyset$ for every vertex $v$. Compared to well-known undirected intersection graphs like interval graphs and permutation graphs, not many algorithmic applications on intersection digraphs have been developed. Motivated by the successful story on algorithmic applications of intersection graphs using a graph width parameter called mim-width…
Clique-width is a well-studied graph parameter owing to its use in understanding algorithmic tractability: if the clique-width of a graph class ${\cal G}$ is bounded by a constant, a wide range of problems that are NP-complete in general can be shown to be polynomial-time solvable on ${\cal G}$. For this reason, the boundedness or unboundedness of clique-width has been investigated and determined for many graph classes. We survey these results for hereditary graph classes, which are the graph classes closed under taking induced subgraphs. We then discuss the algorithmic consequences of these r…
Locally-biased graph algorithms are algorithms that attempt to find local or small-scale structure in a large data graph. In some cases, this can be accomplished by adding some sort of locality constraint and calling a traditional graph algorithm; but more interesting are locally-biased graph algorithms that compute answers by running a procedure that does not even look at most of the input graph. This corresponds more closely to what practitioners from various data science domains do, but it does not correspond well with the way that algorithmic and statistical theory is typically formulated.…
A graph $G$ covers a graph $H$ if there exists a locally bijective homomorphism from $G$ to $H$. We deal with regular covers in which this locally bijective homomorphism is prescribed by an action of a subgroup of ${\rm Aut}(G)$. Regular covers have many applications in constructions and studies of big objects all over mathematics and computer science. We study computational aspects of regular covers that have not been addressed before. The decision problem RegularCover asks for two given graphs $G$ and $H$ whether $G$ regularly covers $H$. When $|H|=1$, this problem becomes Cayley graph recog…
LCLs or locally checkable labelling problems (e.g. maximal independent set, maximal matching, and vertex colouring) in the LOCAL model of computation are very well-understood in cycles (toroidal 1-dimensional grids): every problem has a complexity of $O(1)$, $Θ(\log^* n)$, or $Θ(n)$, and the design of optimal algorithms can be fully automated. This work develops the complexity theory of LCL problems for toroidal 2-dimensional grids. The complexity classes are the same as in the 1-dimensional case: $O(1)$, $Θ(\log^* n)$, and $Θ(n)$. However, given an LCL problem it is undecidable whether its co…
For many algorithmic problems, traditional algorithms that optimise on the number of instructions executed prove expensive on I/Os. Novel and very different design techniques, when applied to these problems, can produce algorithms that are I/O efficient. This thesis adds to the growing chorus of such results. The computational models we use are the external memory model and the W-Stream model. On the external memory model, we obtain the following results. (1) An I/O efficient algorithm for computing minimum spanning trees of graphs that improves on the performance of the best known algorithm. …
Previous work has suggested that the structural restrictions of graphs from classes of bounded expansion--locally dense pockets in a globally sparse graph--naturally coincide with common properties of real-world networks such as clustering and heavy-tailed degree distributions. As such, fixed-parameter tractable algorithms for bounded expansion classes may offer a promising framework for network analysis where other approaches have struggled to scale. However, there has been little work done in implementing and evaluating the performance of these structure-based algorithms. To this end we intr…
Online matching problems have garnered significant attention in recent years due to numerous applications in e-commerce, online advertisements, ride-sharing, etc. Many of them capture the uncertainty in the real world by including stochasticity in both the arrival process and the matching process. The Online Stochastic Matching with Timeouts problem introduced by Bansal, et al., (Algorithmica, 2012) models matching markets (e.g., E-Bay, Amazon). Buyers arrive from an independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) known distribution on buyer profiles and can be shown a list of items one at a …
The Adaptive Seeding problem is an algorithmic challenge motivated by influence maximization in social networks: One seeks to select among certain accessible nodes in a network, and then select, adaptively, among neighbors of those nodes as they become accessible in order to maximize a global objective function. More generally, adaptive seeding is a stochastic optimization framework where the choices in the first stage affect the realizations in the second stage, over which we aim to optimize. Our main result is a $(1-1/e)^2$-approximation for the adaptive seeding problem for any monotone subm…
