Given integers $Δ\ge 2$ and $t\ge 2Δ$, suppose there is a graph of maximum degree $Δ$ and a partition of its vertices into blocks of size at least $t$. By a seminal result of Haxell, there must be some independent set of the graph that is transversal to the blocks, a so-called independent transversal. We show that, if moreover $t\ge2Δ+1$, then every independent transversal can be transformed within the space of independent transversals to any other through a sequence of one-vertex modifications, showing connectivity of the so-called reconfigurability graph of independent transversals.
This is sharp in that for $t=2Δ$ (and $Δ\ge 2$) the connectivity conclusion can fail. In this case we show furthermore that in an essential sense it can only fail for the disjoint union of copies of the complete bipartite graph $K_{Δ,Δ}$. This constitutes a qualitative strengthening of Haxell's theorem.
Suppose that two independent sets $I$ and $J$ of a graph with $\vert I \vert = \vert J \vert$ are given, and a token is placed on each vertex in $I$. The Sliding Token problem is to determine whether there exists a sequence of independent sets which transforms $I$ into $J$ so that each independent set in the sequence results from the previous one by sliding exactly one token along an edge in the graph. It is one of the representative reconfiguration problems that attract the attention from the viewpoint of theoretical computer science. For a yes-instance of a reconfiguration problem, finding a…
We study reconfiguration of independent sets in interval graphs under the token sliding rule. We show that if two independent sets of size $k$ are reconfigurable in an $n$-vertex interval graph, then there is a reconfiguration sequence of length $\mathcal{O}(k\cdot n^2)$. We also provide a construction in which the shortest reconfiguration sequence is of length $Ω(k^2\cdot n)$. As a counterpart to these results, we also establish that $\textsf{Independent Set Reconfiguration}$ is PSPACE-hard on incomparability graphs, of which interval graphs are a special case.
The independent set reconfiguration problem asks whether one can transform one given independent set of a graph into another, by changing vertices one by one in such a way the intermediate sets remain independent. Extremal problems on independent sets are widely studied: for example, it is well known that an $n$-vertex graph has at most $3^{n/3}$ maximum independent sets (and this is tight). This paper investigates the asymptotic behavior of maximum possible length of a shortest reconfiguration sequence for independent sets of size $k$ among all $n$-vertex graphs. We give a tight bound for $k=…
A graph vertex-subset problem defines which subsets of the vertices of an input graph are feasible solutions. We view a feasible solution as a set of tokens placed on the vertices of the graph. A reconfiguration variant of a vertex-subset problem asks, given two feasible solutions of size $k$, whether it is possible to transform one into the other by a sequence of token slides (along edges of the graph) or token jumps (between arbitrary vertices of the graph) such that each intermediate set remains a feasible solution of size $k$. Many algorithmic questions present themselves in the form of re…
A $[k,n,1]$-graph is a $k$-partite graph with parts of order $n$ such that the bipartite graph induced by any pair of parts is a matching. An independent transversal in such a graph is an independent set that intersects each part in a single vertex. A factor of independent transversals is a set of $n$ pairwise-disjoint independent transversals. Let $f(k)$ be the smallest integer $n_0$ such that every $[k,n,1]$-graph has a factor of independent transversals assuming $n \ge n_0$. Several known conjectures imply that for $k \ge 2$, $f(k)=k$ if $k$ is even and $f(k)=k+1$ if $k$ is odd. While a sim…
Let $G=(V, E)$ be a graph. A set $S\subseteq V(G)$ is a {\it dominating set} of $G$ if every vertex in $V\setminus S$ is adjacent to a vertex of $S$. The {\it domination number} of $G$, denoted by $γ(G)$, is the cardinality of a minimum dominating set of $G$. Furthermore, a dominating set $S$ is an {\it independent transversal dominating set} of $G$ if it intersects every maximum independent set of $G$. The {\it independent transversal domination number} of $G$, denoted by $γ_{it}(G)$, is the cardinality of a minimum independent transversal dominating set of $G$. In 2012, Hamid initiated the s…
An independent transversal of a graph $G$ with a vertex partition $\mathcal P$ is an independent set of $G$ intersecting each block of $\mathcal P$ in a single vertex. Wanless and Wood proved that if each block of $\mathcal P$ has size at least $t$ and the average degree of vertices in each block is at most $t/4$, then an independent transversal of $\mathcal P$ exists. We present a construction showing that this result is optimal: for any $\varepsilon > 0$ and sufficiently large $t$, there is a family of forests with vertex partitions whose block size is at least $t$, average degree of vertice…
In 1994, Erdős, Gyárfás and Łuczak posed the following problem: given disjoint vertex sets $V_1,\dots,V_n$ of size~$k$, with exactly one edge between any pair $V_i,V_j$, how large can $n$ be such that there will always be an independent transversal? They showed that the maximal $n$ is at most $(1+o(1))k^2$, by providing an explicit construction with these parameters and no independent transversal. They also proved a lower bound which is smaller by a $2e$-factor. In this paper, we solve this problem by showing that their upper bound construction is best possible: if $n\le (1-o(1))k^2$, there wi…
The independent domination number $i(G)$ of a graph $G$ is the minimum cardinality of a maximal independent set of $G$, also called an $i(G)$-set. The $i$-graph of $G$, denoted $\mathcal{I}(G)$, is the graph whose vertices correspond to the $i(G)$-sets, and where two $i(G)$-sets are adjacent if and only if they differ by two adjacent vertices. We show that not all graphs are $i$-graph realizable, that is, given a target graph $H$, there does not necessarily exist a source graph $G$ such that $H$ is isomorphic to $\mathcal{I}(G)$. Examples of such graphs include $K_{4}-e$ and $K_{2,3}$. We buil…
Given a graph $G$ and two independent sets $I_s$ and $I_t$ of size $k$, the independent set reconfiguration problem asks whether there exists a sequence of $k$-sized independent sets $I_s = I_0, I_1, I_2, \ldots, I_\ell = I_t$ such that each independent set is obtained from the previous one using a so-called reconfiguration step. Viewing each independent set as a collection of $k$ tokens placed on the vertices of a graph $G$, the two most studied reconfiguration steps are token jumping and token sliding. In the token jumping variant of the problem, a single step allows a token to jump from one…
Assume we are given a graph $G$, two independent sets $S$ and $T$ in $G$ of size $k \geq 1$, and a positive integer $\ell \geq 1$. The goal is to decide whether there exists a sequence $\langle I_0, I_1, ..., I_\ell \rangle$ of independent sets such that for all $j \in \{0,\ldots,\ell-1\}$ the set $I_j$ is an independent set of size $k$, $I_0 = S$, $I_\ell = T$, and $I_{j+1}$ is obtained from $I_j$ by a predetermined reconfiguration rule. We consider two reconfiguration rules. Intuitively, we view each independent set as a collection of tokens placed on the vertices of the graph. Then, the Tok…
\textsc{Directed Token Sliding} asks, given a directed graph and two sets of pairwise nonadjacent vertices, whether one can reach from one set to the other by repeatedly applying a local operation that exchanges a vertex in the current set with one of its out-neighbors, while keeping the nonadjacency. It can be seen as a reconfiguration process where a token is placed on each vertex in the current set, and the local operation slides a token along an arc respecting its direction. Previously, such a problem was extensively studied on undirected graphs, where the edges have no directions and thus…
We give an efficient algorithm that, given a graph $G$ and a partition $V_1,\ldots,V_m$ of its vertex set, finds either an independent transversal (an independent set $\{v_1,\ldots,v_m\}$ in $G$ such that $v_i\in V_i$ for each $i$), or a subset $\mathcal B$ of vertex classes such that the subgraph of $G$ induced by $\bigcup\mathcal B$ has a small dominating set. A non-algorithmic proof of this result has been known for a number of years and has been applied to solve many other problems. Thus we are able to give algorithmic versions of many of these applications, a few of which we describe expl…
The NP-complete problem Feedback Vertex Set is that of deciding whether or not it is possible, for a given integer $k\geq 0$, to delete at most $k$ vertices from a given graph so that what remains is a forest. The variant in which the deleted vertices must form an independent set is called Independent Feedback Vertex Set and is also NP-complete. In fact, even deciding if an independent feedback vertex set exists is NP-complete and this problem is closely related to the $3$-Colouring problem, or equivalently, to the problem of deciding whether or not a graph has an independent odd cycle transve…
A set of vertices in a graph is c-colorable if the subgraph induced by the set has a proper c-coloring. In this paper, we study the problem of finding a step-by-step transformation (reconfiguration) between two c-colorable sets in the same graph. This problem generalizes the well-studied Independent Set Reconfiguration problem. As the first step toward a systematic understanding of the complexity of this general problem, we study the problem on classes of perfect graphs. We first focus on interval graphs and give a combinatorial characterization of the distance between two c-colorable sets. Th…
Let $vc(G)$, $fvs(G)$ and $oct(G)$, respectively, denote the size of a minimum vertex cover, minimum feedback vertex set and minimum odd cycle transversal in a graph $G$. One can ask, when looking for these sets in a graph, how much bigger might they be if we require that they are independent; that is, what is the price of independence? If $G$ has a vertex cover, feedback vertex set or odd cycle transversal that is an independent set, then we let $ivc(G)$, $ifvs(G)$ or $ioct(G)$, respectively, denote the minimum size of such a set. Similar to a recent study on the price of connectivity (Hartin…
Motivated both by recently introduced forms of list colouring and by earlier work on independent transversals subject to a local sparsity condition, we use the semi-random method to prove the following result. For any function $μ$ satisfying $μ(d)=o(d)$ as $d\to\infty$, there is a function $λ$ satisfying $λ(d)=d+o(d)$ as $d\to\infty$ such that the following holds. For any graph $H$ and any partition of its vertices into parts of size at least $λ$ such that (a) for each part the average over its vertices of degree to other parts is at most $d$, and (b) the maximum degree from a vertex to some o…
The DP-coloring problem is a generalization of the list-coloring problem in which the goal is to find an independent transversal in a certain topological cover of a graph $G$. In the online DP-coloring problem, the cover of $G$ is revealed one component at a time, and the independent transversal of the cover must be constructed in parts based on incomplete information. Kim, Kostochka, Li, and Zhu asked whether the chromatic numbers corresponding to these two graph coloring problems can have an arbitrarily large difference in a single graph. We answer this question in the affirmative by constru…
A Linear Kernel for Independent Set Reconfiguration in Planar Graphs
CNRS（法国国家科学研究中心）；Université de Montréal（蒙特利尔大学）；CRM（数学与理论物理研究中心）；Univ. Lyon, Université Lyon 1（里昂大学，里昂第一大学）；LIRIS UMR CNRS 5205（里昂信息科学与图像处理联合研究实验室）；William & Mary, Department of Mathematics（威廉与玛丽学院数学系）
Determining a graph from its reconfiguration graph
Université Clermont Auvergne（克莱蒙奥弗涅大学）；Université d’Orléans（奥尔良大学）；London School of Economics & Political Science（伦敦政治经济学院）；Université Grenoble Alpes（格勒诺布尔阿尔卑斯大学）；Université Lyon（里昂大学）
Given a partition ${\mathcal V}=(V_1, \ldots,V_m)$ of the vertex set of a graph $G$, an {\em independent transversal} (IT) is an independent set in $G$ that contains one vertex from each $V_i$. A {\em fractional IT} is a non-negative real valued function on $V(G)$ that represents each part with total weight at least $1$, and belongs as a vector to the convex hull of the incidence vectors of independent sets in the graph. It is known that if the domination number of the graph induced on the union of every $k$ parts $V_i$ is at least $k$, then there is a fractional IT. We prove a weighted versio…
