We introduce a notion for hierarchical graph clustering which we call the expander hierarchy and show a fully dynamic algorithm for maintaining such a hierarchy on a graph with $n$ vertices undergoing edge insertions and deletions using $n^{o(1)}$ update time. An expander hierarchy is a tree representation of graphs that faithfully captures the cut-flow structure and consequently our dynamic algorithm almost immediately implies several results including:
(1) The first fully dynamic algorithm with $n^{o(1)}$ worst-case update time that allows querying $n^{o(1)}$-approximate conductance, $s$-$t$ maximum flows, and $s$-$t$ minimum cuts for any given $(s,t)$ in $O(\log^{1/6} n)$ time. Our results are deterministic and extend to multi-commodity cuts and flows. The key idea behind these results is a fully dynamic algorithm for maintaining a tree flow sparsifier, a notion introduced by Räcke [FOCS'02] for constructing competitive oblivious routing schemes.
(2) A deterministic fully dynamic connectivity algorithm with $n^{o(1)}$ worst-case update time. This significantly simplifies the recent algorithm by Chuzhoy et al.~that uses the framework of Nanongkai et al. [FOCS'17].
(3) The first non-trivial deterministic fully dynamic treewidth decomposition algorithm on constant-degree graphs with $n^{o(1)}$ worst-case update time that maintains a treewidth decomposition of width $\text{tw}(G)\cdot n^{o(1)}$ where $\text{tw}(G)$ denotes the treewidth of the current graph.
Our technique is based on a new stronger notion of the expander decomposition, called the boundary-linked expander decomposition. This decomposition is more robust against updates and better captures the clustering structure of graphs. Given that the expander decomposition has proved extremely useful in many fields, we expect that our new notion will find more future applications.
Expander graphs play a central role in graph theory and algorithms. With a number of powerful algorithmic tools developed around them, such as the Cut-Matching game, expander pruning, expander decomposition, and algorithms for decremental All-Pairs Shortest Paths (APSP) in expanders, to name just a few, the use of expanders in the design of graph algorithms has become ubiquitous. Specific applications of interest to us are fast deterministic algorithms for cut problems in static graphs, and algorithms for dynamic distance-based graph problems, such as APSP. Unfortunately, the use of expanders …
We study the problem of approximating the quality of a disperser. A bipartite graph $G$ on $([N],[M])$ is a $(ρN,(1-δ)M)$-disperser if for any subset $S\subseteq [N]$ of size $ρN$, the neighbor set $Γ(S)$ contains at least $(1-δ)M$ distinct vertices. Our main results are strong integrality gaps in the Lasserre hierarchy and an approximation algorithm for dispersers. \begin{enumerate} \item For any $α>0$, $δ>0$, and a random bipartite graph $G$ with left degree $D=O(\log N)$, we prove that the Lasserre hierarchy cannot distinguish whether $G$ is an $(N^α,(1-δ)M)$-disperser or not an $(N^{1-α},δ…
In recent years, the expander decomposition method was used to develop many graph algorithms, resulting in major improvements to longstanding complexity barriers. This powerful hammer has led the community to (1) believe that most problems are as easy on worst-case graphs as they are on expanders, and (2) suspect that expander decompositions are the key to breaking the remaining longstanding barriers in fine-grained complexity. We set out to investigate the extent to which these two things are true (and for which problems). Towards this end, we put forth the concept of worst-case to expander-c…
We initiate the study of approximating the largest induced expander in a given graph $G$. Given a $Δ$-regular graph $G$ with $n$ vertices, the goal is to find the set with the largest induced expansion of size at least $δ\cdot n$. We design a bi-criteria approximation algorithm for this problem; if the optimum has induced spectral expansion $λ$ our algorithm returns a $\fracλ{\log^2δ\exp(Δ/λ)}$-(spectral) expander of size at least $δn$ (up to constants). Our proof introduces and employs a novel semidefinite programming relaxation for the largest induced expander problem. We expect to see furth…
A spin system is a framework in which the vertices of a graph are assigned spins from a finite set. The interactions between neighbouring spins give rise to weights, so a spin assignment can also be viewed as a weighted graph homomorphism. The problem of approximating the partition function (the aggregate weight of spin assignments) or of sampling from the resulting probability distribution is typically intractable for general graphs. In this work, we consider arbitrary spin systems on bipartite expander $Δ$-regular graphs, including the canonical class of bipartite random $Δ$-regular graphs. …
We study the problem of graph clustering where the goal is to partition a graph into clusters, i.e. disjoint subsets of vertices, such that each cluster is well connected internally while sparsely connected to the rest of the graph. In particular, we use a natural bicriteria notion motivated by Kannan, Vempala, and Vetta which we refer to as {\em expander decomposition}. Expander decomposition has become one of the building blocks in the design of fast graph algorithms, most notably in the nearly linear time Laplacian solver by Spielman and Teng, and it also has wide applications in practice. …
In this article, we show that the algorithm of maintaining expander decompositions in graphs undergoing edge deletions directly by removing sparse cuts repeatedly can be made efficient. Formally, for an $m$-edge undirected graph $G$, we say a cut $(S, \overline{S})$ is $ϕ$-sparse if $|E_G(S, \overline{S})| < ϕ\cdot \min\{vol_G(S), vol_G(\overline{S})\}$. A $ϕ$-expander decomposition of $G$ is a partition of $V$ into sets $X_1, X_2, \ldots, X_k$ such that each cluster $G[X_i]$ contains no $ϕ$-sparse cut (meaning it is a $ϕ$-expander) with $\tilde{O}(ϕm)$ edges crossing between clusters. A natur…
We demonstrate that for expander graphs, for all $ε> 0,$ there exists a data structure of size $\widetilde{O}(nε^{-1})$ which can be used to return $(1 + ε)$-approximations to effective resistances in $\widetilde{O}(1)$ time per query. Short of storing all effective resistances, previous best approaches could achieve $\widetilde{O}(nε^{-2})$ size and $\widetilde{O}(ε^{-2})$ time per query by storing Johnson-Lindenstrauss vectors for each vertex, or $\widetilde{O}(nε^{-1})$ size and $\widetilde{O}(nε^{-1})$ time per query by storing a spectral sketch. Our construction is based on two key ideas:…
In this note, we study the expander decomposition problem in a more general setting where the input graph has positively weighted edges and nonnegative demands on its vertices. We show how to extend the techniques of Chuzhoy et al. (FOCS 2020) to this wider setting, obtaining a deterministic algorithm for the problem in almost-linear time.
This paper introduces an extended notion of expansion suitable for radio networks. A graph $G=(V,E)$ is called an $(α_w, β_w)$-{wireless expander} if for every subset $S \subseteq V$ s.t. $|S|\leq α_w \cdot |V|$, there exists a subset $S'\subseteq S$ s.t. there are at least $β_w \cdot |S|$ vertices in $V\backslash S$ adjacent in $G$ to exactly one vertex in $S'$. The main question we ask is the following: to what extent are ordinary expanders also good {wireless} expanders? We answer this question in a nearly tight manner. On the positive side, we show that any $(α, β)$-expander with maximum d…
We prove a structure theorem for the feasible solutions of the Arora-Rao-Vazirani SDP relaxation on low threshold rank graphs and on small-set expanders. We show that if G is a graph of bounded threshold rank or a small-set expander, then an optimal solution of the Arora-Rao-Vazirani relaxation (or of any stronger version of it) can be almost entirely covered by a small number of balls of bounded radius. Then, we show that, if k is the number of balls, a solution of this form can be rounded with an approximation factor of O(sqrt {log k}) in the case of the Arora-Rao-Vazirani relaxation, and wi…
We give an FPTAS and an efficient sampling algorithm for the high-fugacity hard-core model on bounded-degree bipartite expander graphs and the low-temperature ferromagnetic Potts model on bounded-degree expander graphs. The results apply, for example, to random (bipartite) $Δ$-regular graphs, for which no efficient algorithms were known for these problems (with the exception of the Ising model) in the non-uniqueness regime of the infinite $Δ$-regular tree. We also find efficient counting and sampling algorithms for proper $q$-colorings of random $Δ$-regular bipartite graphs when $q$ is suffici…
Expander Hierarchies for Normalized Cuts on Graphs
University of Vienna（维也纳大学）；Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA)（奥地利科学与技术研究院）；Technical University of Munich（慕尼黑技术大学）；University of Vienna Faculty of Computer Science（维也纳大学计算机科学系）；UniVie Doctoral School Computer Science DoCS（维也纳大学计算机科学博士学院）
It is shown that there exists a sequence of 3-regular graphs $\{G_n\}_{n=1}^\infty$ and a Hadamard space $X$ such that $\{G_n\}_{n=1}^\infty$ forms an expander sequence with respect to $X$, yet random regular graphs are not expanders with respect to $X$. This answers a question of \cite{NS11}. $\{G_n\}_{n=1}^\infty$ are also shown to be expanders with respect to random regular graphs, yielding a deterministic sublinear time constant factor approximation algorithm for computing the average squared distance in subsets of a random graph. The proof uses the Euclidean cone over a random graph, an a…
Deterministic constructions of expander graphs have been an important topic of research in computer science and mathematics, with many well-studied constructions of infinite families of expanders. In some applications, though, an infinite family is not enough: we need expanders which are "close" to each other. We study the following question: Construct an an infinite sequence of expanders $G_0,G_1,\dots$, such that for every two consecutive graphs $G_i$ and $G_{i+1}$, $G_{i+1}$ can be obtained from $G_i$ by adding a single vertex and inserting/removing a small number of edges, which we call th…
In this paper we study expander graphs and their minors. Specifically, we attempt to answer the following question: what is the largest function $f(n,α,d)$, such that every $n$-vertex $α$-expander with maximum vertex degree at most $d$ contains {\bf every} graph $H$ with at most $f(n,α,d)$ edges and vertices as a minor? Our main result is that there is some universal constant $c$, such that $f(n,α,d)\geq \frac{n}{c\log n}\cdot \left(\fracα{d}\right )^c$. This bound achieves a tight dependence on $n$: it is well known that there are bounded-degree $n$-vertex expanders, that do not contain any g…
Trellis codes with a good distance profile constructed from expander graphs
School of Science and Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen)（香港中文大学（深圳）理工学院）；School of Science and Engineering, Future Networks of Intelligence Institute, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen)（香港中文大学（深圳）理工学院未来网络智能研究院）
Assume for a graph $G=(V,E)$ and an initial configuration, where each node is blue or red, in each discrete-time round all nodes simultaneously update their color to the most frequent color in their neighborhood and a node keeps its color in case of a tie. We study the behavior of this basic process, which is called majority model, on the binomial random graph $\mathcal{G}_{n,p}$ and regular expanders. First we consider the behavior of the majority model in $\mathcal{G}_{n,p}$ with an initial random configuration, where each node is blue independently with probability $p_b$ and red otherwise. …
There is a recent exciting line of work in distributed graph algorithms in the $\mathsf{CONGEST}$ model that exploit expanders. All these algorithms so far are based on two tools: expander decomposition and expander routing. An $(ε,ϕ)$-expander decomposition removes $ε$-fraction of the edges so that the remaining connected components have conductance at least $ϕ$, i.e., they are $ϕ$-expanders, and expander routing allows each vertex $v$ in a $ϕ$-expander to very quickly exchange $\text{deg}(v)$ messages with any other vertices, not just its local neighbors. In this paper, we give the first eff…
We consider a modified random walk which uses unvisited edges whenever possible, and makes a simple random walk otherwise. We call such a walk an edge-process. We assume there is a rule A, which tells the walk which unvisited edge to use whenever there is a choice. In the simplest case, A is a uniform random choice over unvisited edges incident with the current walk position. However we do not exclude arbitrary choices of rule A. For example, the rule could be determined on-line by an adversary, or could vary from vertex to vertex. For even degree expander graphs, of bounded maximum degree, we…
Designing distributed and scalable algorithms to improve network connectivity is a central topic in peer-to-peer networks. In this paper we focus on the following well-known problem: given an $n$-node $d$-regular network for $d=Ω(\log n)$, we want to design a decentralized, local algorithm that transforms the graph into one that has good connectivity properties (low diameter, expansion, etc.) without affecting the sparsity of the graph. To this end, Mahlmann and Schindelhauer introduced the random "flip" transformation, where in each time step, a random pair of vertices that have an edge decid…
We study the classical expander codes, introduced by Sipser and Spielman \cite{SS96}. Given any constants $0< α, \varepsilon < 1/2$, and an arbitrary bipartite graph with $N$ vertices on the left, $M < N$ vertices on the right, and left degree $D$ such that any left subset $S$ of size at most $αN$ has at least $(1-\varepsilon)|S|D$ neighbors, we show that the corresponding linear code given by parity checks on the right has distance at least roughly $\frac{αN}{2 \varepsilon }$. This is strictly better than the best known previous result of $2(1-\varepsilon ) αN$ \cite{Sudan2000note, Viderman13…
