Searcharxiv⌕ Search
Home/Archive/arXiv

arXiv · 1510.03614

On the Complexity of Rainbow Coloring Problems

Eduard Eiben·Robert Ganian·Juho Lauri
View original source ↗Read source document ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

An edge-colored graph $G$ is said to be rainbow connected if between each pair of vertices there exists a path which uses each color at most once. The rainbow connection number, denoted by $rc(G)$, is the minimum number of colors needed to make $G$ rainbow connected. Along with its variants, which consider vertex colorings and/or so-called strong colorings, the rainbow connection number has been studied from both the algorithmic and graph-theoretic points of view. In this paper we present a range of new results on the computational complexity of computing the four major variants of the rainbow connection number. In particular, we prove that the \textsc{Strong Rainbow Vertex Coloring} problem is $NP$-complete even on graphs of diameter $3$. We show that when the number of colors is fixed, then all of the considered problems can be solved in linear time on graphs of bounded treewidth. Moreover, we provide a linear-time algorithm which decides whether it is possible to obtain a rainbow coloring by saving a fixed number of colors from a trivial upper bound. Finally, we give a linear-time algorithm for computing the exact rainbow connection numbers for three variants of the problem on graphs of bounded vertex cover number.

Explore related subjects

cs.DMmath.CO

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

Eduard Eiben, Robert Ganian, Juho Lauri. 2015-10-13. On the Complexity of Rainbow Coloring Problems. https://arxiv.org/abs/1510.03614

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

arXiv2026

An FPTAS for Two-Machine Open-Shop Scheduling with a Single Unavailability Interval

We consider the two-machine open-shop scheduling problem in which one machine is unavailable during a fixed interval. We study the resumable setting: an operation interrupted by the unavailability interval may resume, without penalty, when the machine becomes available. The objective is to minimize the makespan. Although the problem is NP-hard and several approximation algorithms are known, whether it admits a fully polynomial-time approximation scheme (FPTAS) has remained open for two decades. We resolve this question affirmatively by giving the first FPTAS, thereby strengthening the previously known polynomial-time approximation scheme (PTAS). As an intermediate result, we develop a new pseudo-polynomial dynamic program with seven state dimensions, improving on the ten-dimensional formulation in the literature.

cs.DM↗
arXiv2026

Generalized Graph Search Trees

Graph search algorithms and their corresponding graph search trees are commonly used in algorithmic graph theory. In recent years, the recognition problem of these graph search trees has received significant attention. So far, the research has focused on two types of search trees: first-in trees that behave like BFS-trees and last-in trees that behave like DFS-trees. The search tree paradigms differ from each other by the parent a vertex is connected to. In first-in trees, it is the first visited neighbor, while in last-in trees it is the last neighbor visited before that vertex. Here, we will generalize these concepts of graph search trees by allowing every preceding neighbor of a vertex to be the parent. We study the complexity of the recognition problem of these generalized graph search trees. We present NP-completeness proofs for most searches. We also show that the problem is trivial for Generic Search and polynomial-time solvable for several searches on bipartite graphs and chordal graphs. We also study the question how fixing the start vertex influences the complexity of the problem.

cs.DM↗
arXiv2026

The exact asymptotic constant in the metric dimension of Jaccard space

Let $X$ be a finite set with $|X|=n$ and let $\mathrm{Jac}(a,b)=|a\,\triangle\, b|/|a\cup b|$ be the Jaccard distance on the power set $2^X$. Lladser and Paradise recently proved that the metric dimension of $(2^X,\mathrm{Jac})$ is $\Theta(n/\ln n)$, with the constant left open; their bounds are $(\ln 2)\,n/\ln n\lesssim \beta(2^X,\mathrm{Jac})\lesssim 2\ln(2e)\,n/\ln n$. We determine the constant: \[ \beta(2^X,\mathrm{Jac})=\frac{2n}{\log_2 n}\,(1+o(1))=(2\ln 2)\,\frac{n}{\ln n}\,(1+o(1)). \] The proof identifies the problem, on each ``slice'' of subsets of fixed cardinality, with the Erd\H{o}s--R\'enyi coin-weighing problem for a spring scale (the problem of \emph{detecting matrices}). The lower bound is the Erd\H{o}s--R\'enyi entropy argument applied to the middle slice; the upper bound follows from the explicit detecting families of Lindstr\"om and of Cantor and Mills, augmented by a single extra landmark that reveals cardinality.

cs.DM↗