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arXiv · 2502.16193

Testing whether a subgraph is convex or isometric

Sergio Cabello
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Abstract

We consider the following two algorithmic problems: given a graph $G$ and a subgraph $H\subseteq G$, decide whether $H$ is an isometric or a geodesically convex subgraph of $G$. It is relatively easy to see that the problems can be solved by computing the distances between all pairs of vertices. We provide a conditional lower bound showing that, for sparse graphs with $n$ vertices and $\Theta(n)$ edges, we cannot expect to solve the problem in $O(n^{2-\varepsilon})$ time for any constant $\varepsilon>0$. We also show that the problem can be solved in subquadratic time for planar graphs and in near-linear time for graphs of bounded treewidth. Finally, we provide a near-linear time algorithm for the setting where $G$ is a plane graph and $H$ is defined by a few cycles in $G$.

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Sergio Cabello. 2025-02-22. Testing whether a subgraph is convex or isometric. https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.16193

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