A kernel of a directed graph is a subset of vertices that is both independent and absorbing (every vertex not in the kernel has an out-neighbour in the kernel). Not all directed graphs contain kernels, and computing a kernel or deciding that none exist is NP-complete even on low-degree planar digraphs. The existing polynomial-time algorithms for this problem all restrict both the undirected structure and the edge orientations of the input: for example, to chordal graphs without bidirectional edges (Pass-Lanneau, Igarashi and Meunier, Discrete Appl Math 2020) or to permutation graphs where each clique has a sink (Abbas and Saoula, 4OR 2005). By contrast, we count the kernels of a fuzzy circular interval graph in polynomial time, regardless of its edge orientations, and return a kernel when one exists. (Fuzzy circular graphs were introduced by Chudnovsky and Seymour in their structure theorem for claw-free graphs.) We also consider kernels on cographs, where we establish NP-hardness in general but linear running times on the subclass of threshold graphs.
Alon and Yuster proved that the number of orientations of any $n$-vertex graph in which every $K_3$ is transitively oriented is at most $2^{\lfloor n^2/4\rfloor}$ for $n \geq 10^4$ and conjectured that the precise lower bound on $n$ should be $n \geq 8$. We confirm their conjecture and, additionally, characterize the extremal families by showing that the balanced complete bipartite graph with $n$ vertices is the only $n$-vertex graph for which there are exactly $2^{\lfloor n^2/4\rfloor}$ such orientations.
Unique-sink orientations (USOs) are an abstract class of orientations of the n-cube graph. We consider some classes of USOs that are of interest in connection with the linear complementarity problem. We summarise old and show new lower and upper bounds on the sizes of some such classes. Furthermore, we provide a characterisation of K-matrices in terms of their corresponding USOs.
Let $S_k(n)$ be the maximum number of orientations of an $n$-vertex graph $G$ in which no copy of $K_k$ is strongly connected. For all integers $n$, $k\geq 4$ where $n\geq 5$ or $k\geq 5$, we prove that $S_k(n) = 2^{t_{k-1}(n)}$, where $t_{k-1}(n)$ is the number of edges of the $n$-vertex $(k-1)$-partite Turán graph $T_{k-1}(n)$, and that $T_{k-1}(n)$ is the only $n$-vertex graph with this number of orientations. Furthermore, $S_4(4) = 40$ and this maximality is achieved only by $K_4$.
A dominating set of a graph is a set of vertices such that every vertex not in the set has at least one neighbor in the set. The problem of counting dominating sets is #P-complete for chordal graphs but solvable in polynomial time for its subclass of interval graphs. The complexity status of the corresponding problem is still undetermined for directed path graphs, which are a well-known class of graphs that falls between chordal graphs and interval graphs. This paper reveals that the problem of counting dominating sets remains #P-complete for directed path graphs but a stricter constraint to r…
In this paper we initialize the study of independent domination in directed graphs. We show that an independent dominating set of an orientation of a graph is also an independent dominating set of the underlying graph, but that the converse is not true in general. We then prove existence and uniqueness theorems for several classes of digraphs including orientations of complete graphs, paths, trees, DAGs, cycles, and bipartite graphs. We also provide the idomatic number for special cases of some of these families of digraphs.
The sizes of Markov equivalence classes of directed acyclic graphs play important roles in measuring the uncertainty and complexity in causal learning. A Markov equivalence class can be represented by an essential graph and its undirected subgraphs determine the size of the class. In this paper, we develop a method to derive the formulas for counting the sizes of Markov equivalence classes. We first introduce a new concept of core graph. The size of a Markov equivalence class of interest is a polynomial of the number of vertices given its core graph. Then, we discuss the recursive and explicit…
We study the fixed-parameter tractability of the following fundamental problem: given two directed graphs $\vec H$ and $\vec G$, count the number of copies of $\vec H$ in $\vec G$. The standard setting, where the tractability is well understood, uses only $|\vec H|$ as a parameter. In this paper we take a step forward, and adopt as a parameter $|\vec H|+d(\vec G)$, where $d(\vec G)$ is the maximum outdegree of $|\vec G|$. Under this parameterization, we completely characterize the fixed-parameter tractability of the problem in both its non-induced and induced versions through two novel structu…
Given a graph, does there exist an orientation of the edges such that the resulting directed graph is strongly connected? Robbins' theorem [Robbins, Am. Math. Monthly, 1939] states that such an orientation exists if and only if the graph is $2$-edge connected. A natural extension of this problem is the following: Suppose that the edges of the graph is partitioned into trails. Can we orient the trails such that the resulting directed graph is strongly connected? We show that $2$-edge connectivity is again a sufficient condition and we provide a linear time algorithm for finding such an orientat…
Many polynomial invariants are defined on graphs for encoding the combinatorial information and researching them algebraically. In this paper, we introduce the cycle polynomial and the path polynomial of directed graphs for counting cycles and paths, respectively. They satisfy recurrence relations with respect to elementary edge or vertex operations. They are related to other polynomials and can also be generalized to the bivariate cycle polynomial, the bivariate path polynomial and the trivariate cycle-path polynomial. And a most general digraph polynomial satisfying such a linear recurrence …
Let $P$ be a simple polytope with $n-d = 2$, where $d$ is the dimension and $n$ is the number of facets. The graph of such a polytope is also called a grid. It is known that the directed random walk along the edges of $P$ terminates after $O(\log^2 n)$ steps, if the edges are oriented in a (pseudo-)linear fashion. We prove that the same bound holds for the more general unique sink orientations.
We consider two possible extensions of a theorem of Thomassen characterizing the graphs admitting a 2-vertex-connected orientation. First, we show that the problem of deciding whether a mixed graph has a 2-vertex-connected orientation is NP-hard. This answers a question of Bang-Jensen, Huang and Zhu. For the second part, we call a directed graph $D=(V,A)$ $2T$-connected for some $T \subseteq V$ if $D$ is 2-arc-connected and $D-v$ is strongly connected for all $v \in T$. We deduce a characterization of the graphs admitting a $2T$-connected orientation from the theorem of Thomassen.
We develop a new framework for investigating linear equivalence of divisors on graphs using a generalization of Gioan's cycle--cocycle reversal system for partial orientations. An oriented version of Dhar's burning algorithm is introduced and employed in the study of acyclicity for partial orientations. We then show that the Baker--Norine rank of a partially orientable divisor is one less than the minimum number of directed paths which need to be reversed in the generalized cycle--cocycle reversal system to produce an acyclic partial orientation. These results are applied in providing new proo…
Given an undirected graph, one can assign directions to each of the edges of the graph, thus orienting the graph. To be as egalitarian as possible, one may wish to find an orientation such that no vertex is unfairly hit with too many arcs directed into it. We discuss how this objective arises in problems resulting from telecommunications. We give optimal, polynomial-time algorithms for: finding an orientation that minimizes the lexicographic order of the indegrees and finding a strongly-connected orientation that minimizes the maximum indegree. We show that minimizing the lexicographic order o…
Many applications in graph theory are motivated by routing or flow problems. Among these problems is Steiner Orientation: given a mixed graph G (having directed and undirected edges) and a set T of k terminal pairs in G, is there an orientation of the undirected edges in G such that there is a directed path for every terminal pair in T ? This problem was shown to be NP -complete by Arkin and Hassin [1] and later W [1]-hard by Pilipczuk and Wahlström [7], parametrized by k. On the other hand, there is an XP algorithm by Cygan et al. [3] and a polynomial time algorithm for graphs without directe…
A directed cycle double cover of a graph G is a family of cycles of G, each provided with an orientation, such that every edge of G is covered by exactly two oppositely directed cycles. Explicit obstacles to the existence of a directed cycle double cover in a graph are bridges. Jaeger conjectured that bridges are actually the only obstacles. One of the difficulties in proving the Jaeger's conjecture lies in discovering and avoiding obstructions to partial strategies that, if successful, create directed cycle double covers. In this work, we suggest a way to circumvent this difficulty. We formul…
Let G be an edge weighted undirected graph. For every pair of nodes consider the shortest cycle containing these nodes in G. The cycle diameter of G is the maximum length of a cycle in this set. Let H be a directed graph obtained by directing the edges of G. The cycle diameter of H is similarly defined except for that cycles are replaced by directed closed walks. Is there always an orientation H of G whose cycle diameter is bounded by a constant times the cycle diameter of G? We prove this property for planar graphs. These results have implications on the problem of approximating an orientatio…
In this paper we obtain the expectation and variance of the number of Euler tours of a random Eulerian directed graph with fixed out-degree sequence. We use this to obtain the asymptotic distribution of the number of Euler tours of a random $d$-in/$d$-out graph and prove a concentration result. We are then able to show that a very simple approach for uniform sampling or approximately counting Euler tours yields algorithms running in expected polynomial time for almost every $d$-in/$d$-out graph. We make use of the BEST theorem of de Bruijn, van Aardenne-Ehrenfest, Smith and Tutte, which shows …
We propose an improved algorithm for counting the number of Hamiltonian cycles in a directed graph. The basic idea of the method is sequential acceptance/rejection, which is successfully used in approximating the number of perfect matchings in dense bipartite graphs. As a consequence, a new bound on the number of Hamiltonian cycles in a directed graph is proved, by using the ratio of the number of 1-factors. Based on this bound, we prove that our algorithm runs in expected time of $O(n^{8.5})$ for dense problems. This improves the Markov chain method, the most powerful existing method, a facto…
An upper bound for the number of Hamiltonian cycles of symmetric diagraphs is established first in this paper, which is tighter than the famous Minc's bound and the Br$\acute{e}$gman's bound. A transformation on graphs is proposed, so that counting the number of Hamiltonian cycles of an undirected graph can be done by counting the number of Hamiltonian cycles of its corresponding symmetric directed graph. In this way, an upper bound for the number of Hamiltonian cycles of undirected graphs is also obtained.
