We study weighted edge coloring of graphs, where we are given an undirected edge-weighted general multi-graph $G := (V, E)$ with weights $w : E \rightarrow [0, 1]$. The goal is to find a proper weighted coloring of the edges with as few colors as possible. An edge coloring is called a proper weighted coloring if the sum of the weights of the edges incident to a vertex of any color is at most one. In the online setting, the edges are revealed one by one and have to be colored irrevocably as soon as they are revealed. We show that $3.39m+o(m)$ colors are enough when the maximum number of neighbors of a vertex over all the vertices is $o(m)$ and where $m$ is the maximum over all vertices of the minimum number of unit-sized bins needed to pack the weights of the incident edges to that vertex. We also prove the tightness of our analysis. This improves upon the previous best upper bound of $5m$ by Correa and Goemans [STOC 2004]. For the offline case, we show that for a simple graph with edge disjoint cycles, $m+1$ colors are sufficient and for a multi-graph tree, we show that $1.693m+12$ colors are sufficient.
We study the weighted improper coloring problem, a generalization of defective coloring. We present some hardness results and in particular we show that weighted improper coloring is not fixed-parameter tractable when parameterized by pathwidth. We generalize bounds for defective coloring to weighted improper coloring and give a bound for weighted improper coloring in terms of the sum of edge weights. Finally we give fixed-parameter algorithms for weighted improper coloring both when parameterized by treewidth and maximum degree and when parameterized by treewidth and precision of edge weights…
We consider worst case time bounds for NP-complete problems including 3-SAT, 3-coloring, 3-edge-coloring, and 3-list-coloring. Our algorithms are based on a constraint satisfaction (CSP) formulation of these problems; 3-SAT is equivalent to (2,3)-CSP while the other problems above are special cases of (3,2)-CSP. We give a fast algorithm for (3,2)-CSP and use it to improve the time bounds for solving the other problems listed above. Our techniques involve a mixture of Davis-Putnam-style backtracking with more sophisticated matching and network flow based ideas.
For a fixed number of colors, we show that, in node-weighted split graphs, cographs, and graphs of bounded tree-width, one can determine in polynomial time whether a proper list-coloring of the vertices of a graph such that the total weight of vertices of each color equals a given value in each part of a fixed partition of the vertices exists. We also show that this result is tight in some sense, by providing hardness results for the cases where any one of the assumptions does not hold. The edge-coloring variant is also studied, as well as special cases of cographs and split graphs.
We study the weighted generalization of the edge coloring problem where the weight of each color class (matching) equals to the weight of its heaviest edge and the goal is to minimize the sum of the colors' weights. We present a 3/2-approximation algorithm for trees.
In this paper, we investigate the weighted tree augmentation problem (TAP), where the goal is to augment a tree with a minimum cost set of edges such that the graph becomes two edge connected. First we show that in weighted TAP, we can restrict our attention to trees which are binary and where all the non-tree edges go between two leaves of the tree. We then give two different top-down coloring algorithms. Both algorithms differ from known techniques for a 3/2-approximation in unweighted TAP and current attempts to reach a 3/2-approximation for weighted TAP. The first algorithm we describe alw…
This paper studies the fundamental problem of graph coloring in fully dynamic graphs. Since the problem of computing an optimal coloring, or even approximating it to within $n^{1-ε}$ for any $ε> 0$, is NP-hard in static graphs, there is no hope to achieve any meaningful computational results for general graphs in the dynamic setting. It is therefore only natural to consider the combinatorial aspects of dynamic coloring, or alternatively, study restricted families of graphs. Towards understanding the combinatorial aspects of this problem, one may assume a black-box access to a static algorithm …
We present a randomized distributed algorithm that computes a $Δ$-coloring in any non-complete graph with maximum degree $Δ\geq 4$ in $O(\log Δ) + 2^{O(\sqrt{\log\log n})}$ rounds, as well as a randomized algorithm that computes a $Δ$-coloring in $O((\log \log n)^2)$ rounds when $Δ\in [3, O(1)]$. Both these algorithms improve on an $O(\log^3 n/\log Δ)$-round algorithm of Panconesi and Srinivasan~[STOC'1993], which has remained the state of the art for the past 25 years. Moreover, the latter algorithm gets (exponentially) closer to an $Ω(\log\log n)$ round lower bound of Brandt et al.~[STOC'16]…
The degree splitting problem requires coloring the edges of a graph red or blue such that each node has almost the same number of edges in each color, up to a small additive discrepancy. The directed variant of the problem requires orienting the edges such that each node has almost the same number of incoming and outgoing edges, again up to a small additive discrepancy. We present deterministic distributed algorithms for both variants, which improve on their counterparts presented by Ghaffari and Su [SODA'17]: our algorithms are significantly simpler and faster, and have a much smaller discrep…
We present a randomized algorithm that takes as input an undirected $n$-vertex graph $G$ with maximum degree $Δ$ and an integer $k > 3Δ$, and returns a random proper $k$-coloring of $G$. The distribution of the coloring is \emph{perfectly} uniform over the set of all proper $k$-colorings; the expected running time of the algorithm is $\mathrm{poly}(k,n)=\widetilde{O}(nΔ^2\cdot \log(k))$. This improves upon a result of Huber~(STOC 1998) who obtained a polynomial time perfect sampling algorithm for $k>Δ^2+2Δ$. Prior to our work, no algorithm with expected running time $\mathrm{poly}(k,n)$ was kn…
We present $O(\log\log n)$ round scalable Massively Parallel Computation algorithms for maximal independent set and maximal matching, in trees and more generally graphs of bounded arboricity, as well as for constant coloring trees. Following the standards, by a scalable MPC algorithm, we mean that these algorithms can work on machines that have capacity/memory as small as $n^δ$ for any positive constant $δ<1$. Our results improve over the $O(\log^2\log n)$ round algorithms of Behnezhad et al. [PODC'19]. Moreover, our matching algorithm is presumably optimal as its bound matches an $Ω(\log\log …
We give a fully polynomial-time approximation scheme (FPTAS) to count the number of independent sets on almost every $Δ$-regular bipartite graph if $Δ\ge 53$. In the weighted case, for all sufficiently large integers $Δ$ and weight parameters $λ=\tildeΩ\left(\frac{1}Δ\right)$, we also obtain an FPTAS on almost every $Δ$-regular bipartite graph. Our technique is based on the recent work of Jenssen, Keevash and Perkins (SODA, 2019) and we also apply it to confirm an open question raised there: For all $q\ge 3$ and sufficiently large integers $Δ=Δ(q)$, there is an FPTAS to count the number of $q$…
Strong spatial mixing (SSM) is a form of correlation decay that has played an essential role in the design of approximate counting algorithms for spin systems. A notable example is the algorithm of Weitz (2006) for the hard-core model on weighted independent sets. We study SSM for the $q$-colorings problem on the infinite $(d+1)$-regular tree. Weak spatial mixing (WSM) captures whether the influence of the leaves on the root vanishes as the height of the tree grows. Jonasson (2002) established WSM when $q>d+1$. In contrast, in SSM, we first fix a coloring on a subset of internal vertices, and …
Given a graph $G$, a proper $k$-coloring of $G$ is a partition $c = (S_i)_{i\in [1,k]}$ of $V(G)$ into $k$ stable sets $S_1,\ldots, S_{k}$. Given a weight function $w: V(G) \to \mathbb{R}^+$, the weight of a color $S_i$ is defined as $w(i) = \max_{v \in S_i} w(v)$ and the weight of a coloring $c$ as $w(c) = \sum_{i=1}^{k}w(i)$. Guan and Zhu [Inf. Process. Lett., 1997] defined the weighted chromatic number of a pair $(G,w)$, denoted by $σ(G,w)$, as the minimum weight of a proper coloring of $G$. The problem of determining $σ(G,w)$ has received considerable attention during the last years, and h…
Given an undirected graph $G = (V,E)$ with a set $V$ of vertices and a set $E$ of edges, the minimum sum coloring problem (MSCP) is to find a legal vertex coloring of $G$, using colors represented by natural numbers $1, 2, . . .$ such that the total sum of the colors assigned to the vertices is minimized. This paper describes an approach based on the decomposition of the original graph into disjoint cliques for computing lower bounds for the MSCP. Basically, the proposed approach identifies and removes at each extraction iteration a maximum number of cliques of the same size (the largest possi…
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…
In a bounded max-coloring of a vertex/edge weighted graph, each color class is of cardinality at most $b$ and of weight equal to the weight of the heaviest vertex/edge in this class. The bounded max-vertex/edge-coloring problems ask for such a coloring minimizing the sum of all color classes' weights. In this paper we present complexity results and approximation algorithms for those problems on general graphs, bipartite graphs and trees. We first show that both problems are polynomial for trees, when the number of colors is fixed, and $H_b$ approximable for general graphs, when the bound $b$ i…
Given a graph $G$, a proper $k$-coloring of $G$ is a partition $c = (S_i)_{i\in [1,k]}$ of $V(G)$ into $k$ stable sets $S_1,\ldots, S_{k}$. Given a weight function $w: V(G) \to \mathbb{R}^+$, the weight of a color $S_i$ is defined as $w(i) = \max_{v \in S_i} w(v)$ and the weight of a coloring $c$ as $w(c) = \sum_{i=1}^{k}w(i)$. Guan and Zhu [Inf. Process. Lett., 1997] defined the weighted chromatic number of a pair $(G,w)$, denoted by $σ(G,w)$, as the minimum weight of a proper coloring of $G$. For a positive integer $r$, they also defined $σ(G,w;r)$ as the minimum of $w(c)$ among all proper $…
Bounded expansion and nowhere-dense classes of graphs capture the theoretical tractability for several important algorithmic problems. These classes of graphs can be characterized by the so-called weak coloring numbers of graphs, which generalize the well-known graph invariant degeneracy (also called k-core number). Being NP-hard, weak-coloring numbers were previously computed on real-world graphs mainly via incremental heuristics. We study whether it is feasible to augment such heuristics with exponential-time subprocedures that kick in when a desired upper bound on the weak coloring number i…
We present a deterministic $O(\log \log \log n)$-round low-space Massively Parallel Computation (MPC) algorithm for the classical problem of $(Δ+1)$-coloring on $n$-vertex graphs. In this model, every machine has a sublinear local memory of size $n^ϕ$ for any arbitrary constant $ϕ\in (0,1)$. Our algorithm works under the relaxed setting where each machine is allowed to perform exponential (in $n^ϕ$) local computation, while respecting the $n^ϕ$ space and bandwidth limitations. Our key technical contribution is a novel derandomization of the ingenious $(Δ+1)$-coloring LOCAL algorithm by Chang-L…
In this paper, we present improved algorithms for the $(Δ+1)$ (vertex) coloring problem in the Congested-Clique model of distributed computing. In this model, the input is a graph on $n$ nodes, initially each node knows only its incident edges, and per round each two nodes can exchange $O(\log n)$ bits of information. Our key result is a randomized $(Δ+1)$ vertex coloring algorithm that works in $O(\log\log Δ\cdot \log^* Δ)$-rounds. This is achieved by combining the recent breakthrough result of [Chang-Li-Pettie, STOC'18] in the \local\ model and a degree reduction technique. We also get the f…
In a vertex-colored graph, an edge is happy if its endpoints have the same color. Similarly, a vertex is happy if all its incident edges are happy. Motivated by the computation of homophily in social networks, we consider the algorithmic aspects of the following Maximum Happy Edges (k-MHE) problem: given a partially k-colored graph G, find an extended full k-coloring of G maximizing the number of happy edges. When we want to maximize the number of happy vertices, the problem is known as Maximum Happy Vertices (k-MHV). We further study the complexity of the problems and their weighted variants.…
We show two results related to the Hamiltonicity and $k$-Path algorithms in undirected graphs by Björklund [FOCS'10], and Björklund et al., [arXiv'10]. First, we demonstrate that the technique used can be generalized to finding some $k$-vertex tree with $l$ leaves in an $n$-vertex undirected graph in $O^*(1.657^k2^{l/2})$ time. It can be applied as a subroutine to solve the $k$-Internal Spanning Tree ($k$-IST) problem in $O^*(\min(3.455^k, 1.946^n))$ time using polynomial space, improving upon previous algorithms for this problem. In particular, for the first time we break the natural barrier …
We give an improved randomized CONGEST algorithm for distance-$2$ coloring that uses $Δ^2+1$ colors and runs in $O(\log n)$ rounds, improving the recent $O(\log Δ\cdot \log n)$-round algorithm in [Halldórsson, Kuhn, Maus; PODC '20]. We then improve the time complexity to $O(\log Δ) + 2^{O(\sqrt{\log\log n})}$.
In this work, we continue the study of vertex colorings of graphs, in which adjacent vertices are allowed to be of the same color as long as each monochromatic connected component is of relatively small cardinality. We focus on colorings with two and three available colors and present improved bounds on the size of the monochromatic connected components for two meaningful subclasses of planar graphs, namely maximal outerplanar graphs and complete planar 3-trees.
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 Lovász Local Lemma is a classic result in probability theory that is often used to prove the existence of combinatorial objects via the probabilistic method. In its simplest form, it states that if we have $n$ `bad events', each of which occurs with probability at most $p$ and is independent of all but $d$ other events, then under certain criteria on $p$ and $d$, all of the bad events can be avoided with positive probability. While the original proof was existential, there has been much study on the algorithmic Lovász Local Lemma: that is, designing an algorithm which finds an assignment o…
We consider the problem of finding a low discrepancy coloring for sparse set systems where each element lies in at most $t$ sets. We give an algorithm that finds a coloring with discrepancy $O((t \log n \log s)^{1/2})$ where $s$ is the maximum cardinality of a set. This improves upon the previous constructive bound of $O(t^{1/2} \log n)$ based on algorithmic variants of the partial coloring method, and for small $s$ (e.g.$s=\textrm{poly}(t)$) comes close to the non-constructive $O((t \log n)^{1/2})$ bound due to Banaszczyk. Previously, no algorithmic results better than $O(t^{1/2}\log n)$ were…
A well-known conjecture in computer science and statistical physics is that Glauber dynamics on the set of $k$-colorings of a graph $G$ on $n$ vertices with maximum degree $Δ$ is rapidly mixing for $k\geΔ+2$. In FOCS 1999, Vigoda showed that the flip dynamics (and therefore also Glauber dynamics) is rapidly mixing for any $k>\frac{11}{6}Δ$. It turns out that there is a natural barrier at $\frac{11}{6}$, below which there is no one-step coupling that is contractive with respect to the Hamming metric, even for the flip dynamics. We use linear programming and duality arguments to fully characteri…
We consider the problem of coloring k-colorable graphs with the fewest possible colors. We present a randomized polynomial time algorithm that colors a 3-colorable graph on $n$ vertices with min O(Delta^{1/3} log^{1/2} Delta log n), O(n^{1/4} log^{1/2} n) colors where Delta is the maximum degree of any vertex. Besides giving the best known approximation ratio in terms of n, this marks the first non-trivial approximation result as a function of the maximum degree Delta. This result can be generalized to k-colorable graphs to obtain a coloring using min O(Delta^{1-2/k} log^{1/2} Delta log n), O(…
In this paper, we study the Maximum Happy Vertices and the Maximum Happy Edges problems (MHV and MHE for short). Very recently, the problems attracted a lot of attention and were studied in Agrawal '17, Aravind et al. '16, Choudhari and Reddy '18, Misra and Reddy '17. Main focus of our work is lower bounds on the computational complexity of these problems. Established lower bounds can be divided into the following groups: NP-hardness of the above guarantee parameterization, kernelization lower bounds (answering questions of Misra and Reddy '17), exponential lower bounds under the Set Cover Con…
An equitable graph coloring is a proper vertex coloring of a graph G where the sizes of the color classes differ by at most one. The equitable chromatic number is the smallest number k such that G admits such equitable k-coloring. We focus on enumerative algorithms for the computation of the equitable coloring number and propose a general scheme to derive pruning rules for them: We show how the extendability of a partial coloring into an equitable coloring can be modeled via network flows. Thus, we obtain pruning rules which can be checked via flow algorithms. Computational experiments show th…
In this paper we present a deterministic CONGEST algorithm to compute an $O(kΔ)$-vertex coloring in $O(Δ/k)+\log^* n$ rounds, where $Δ$ is the maximum degree of the network graph and $1\leq k\leq O(Δ)$ can be freely chosen. The algorithm is extremely simple: Each node locally computes a sequence of colors and then it "tries colors" from the sequence in batches of size $k$. Our algorithm subsumes many important results in the history of distributed graph coloring as special cases, including Linial's color reduction [Linial, FOCS'87], the celebrated locally iterative algorithm from [Barenboim, E…
The fastest known classical algorithm deciding the $k$-colorability of $n$-vertex graph requires running time $Ω(2^n)$ for $k\ge 5$. In this work, we present an exponential-space quantum algorithm computing the chromatic number with running time $O(1.9140^n)$ using quantum random access memory (QRAM). Our approach is based on Ambainis et al's quantum dynamic programming with applications of Grover's search to branching algorithms. We also present a polynomial-space quantum algorithm not using QRAM for the graph $20$-coloring problem with running time $O(1.9575^n)$. In the polynomial-space quan…
Improved SDP Coloring of 3-Colorable Graphs from Recursive Gaussian Certificates
Georgia Institute of Technology, School of Computer Science（佐治亚理工学院计算机学院）；Princeton University, Operations Research and Financial Engineering（普林斯顿大学运筹与金融工程学系）
Min-Hash is a popular technique for efficiently estimating the Jaccard similarity of binary sets. Consistent Weighted Sampling (CWS) generalizes the Min-Hash scheme to sketch weighted sets and has drawn increasing interest from the community. Due to its constant-time complexity independent of the values of the weights, Improved CWS (ICWS) is considered as the state-of-the-art CWS algorithm. In this paper, we revisit ICWS and analyze its underlying mechanism to show that there actually exists dependence between the two components of the hash-code produced by ICWS, which violates the condition o…
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 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…
The gap between the known randomized and deterministic local distributed algorithms underlies arguably the most fundamental and central open question in distributed graph algorithms. In this paper, we develop a generic and clean recipe for derandomizing LOCAL algorithms. We also exhibit how this simple recipe leads to significant improvements on a number of problem. Two main results are: - An improved distributed hypergraph maximal matching algorithm, improving on Fischer, Ghaffari, and Kuhn [FOCS'17], and giving improved algorithms for edge-coloring, maximum matching approximation, and low ou…
A recent palette sparsification theorem of Assadi, Chen, and Khanna [SODA'19] states that in every $n$-vertex graph $G$ with maximum degree $Δ$, sampling $O(\log{n})$ colors per each vertex independently from $Δ+1$ colors almost certainly allows for proper coloring of $G$ from the sampled colors. Besides being a combinatorial statement of its own independent interest, this theorem was shown to have various applications to design of algorithms for $(Δ+1)$ coloring in different models of computation on massive graphs such as streaming or sublinear-time algorithms. In this paper, we further study…
We resolve a number of long-standing open problems in online graph coloring. More specifically, we develop tight lower bounds on the performance of online algorithms for fundamental graph classes. An important contribution is that our bounds also hold for randomized online algorithms, for which hardly any results were known. Technically, we construct lower bounds for chordal graphs. The constructions then allow us to derive results on the performance of randomized online algorithms for the following further graph classes: trees, planar, bipartite, inductive, bounded-treewidth and disk graphs. …
We consider the problem of coloring a grid using k colors with the restriction that in each row and each column has an specific number of cells of each color. In an already classical result, Ryser obtained a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of such a coloring when two colors are considered. This characterization yields a linear time algorithm for constructing such a coloring when it exists. Gardner et al. showed that for k>=7 the problem is NP-hard. Afterward Chrobak and Durr improved this result, by proving that it remains NP-hard for k>=4. We solve the gap by showing that…
For spin systems, such as the $q$-colorings and independent-set models, approximating the partition function in the so-called non-uniqueness region, where the model exhibits long-range correlations, is typically computationally hard for bounded-degree graphs. We present new algorithmic results for approximating the partition function and sampling from the Gibbs distribution for spin systems in the non-uniqueness region on random regular bipartite graphs. We give an $\mathsf{FPRAS}$ for counting $q$-colorings for even $q=O\big(\tfracΔ{\logΔ}\big)$ on almost every $Δ$-regular bipartite graph. Th…
We consider combinatorial problems that can be solved in polynomial time for graphs of bounded treewidth but where the order of the polynomial that bounds the running time is expected to depend on the treewidth bound. First we review some recent results for problems regarding list and equitable colorings, general factors, and generalized satisfiability. Second we establish a new hardness result for the problem of minimizing the maximum weighted outdegree for orientations of edge-weighted graphs of bounded treewidth.
