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Anders Yeo

Publications and source records attributed to Anders Yeo.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

Safe sets in digraphs

A non-empty subset $S$ of the vertices of a digraph $D$ is called a {\it safe set} if \begin{itemize} \item[(i)] for every strongly connected component $M$ of $D-S$, there exists a strongly connected component $N$ of $D[S]$ such that there exists an arc from $M$ to $N$; and \item[(ii)] for every strongly connected component $M$ of $D-S$ and every strongly connected component $N$ of $D[S]$, we have $|M|\leq |N|$ whenever there exists an arc from $M$ to $N$. \end{itemize} In the case of acyclic digraphs a set $X$ of vertices is a safe set precisely when $X$ is an {\it in-dominating set}, that is, every vertex not in $X$ has at least one arc to $X$. We prove that, even for acyclic digraphs which are traceable (have a hamiltonian path) it is NP-hard to find a minimum cardinality in-dominating set. Then we show that the problem is also NP-hard for tournaments and give, for every positive constant $c$, a polynomial algorithm for finding a minimum cardinality safe set in a tournament on $n$ vertices in which no strong component has size more than $c\log{}(n)$. Under the so called Exponential Time Hypothesis (ETH) this is close to best possible in the following sense: If ETH holds, then, for every $ε>0$ there is no polynomial time algorithm for finding a minimum cardinality safe set for the class of tournaments in which the largest strong component has size at most $\log^{1+ε}(n)$. We also discuss bounds on the cardinality of safe sets in tournaments.

cs.CC↗

The directed 2-linkage problem with length constraints

The {\sc weak 2-linkage} problem for digraphs asks for a given digraph and vertices $s_1,s_2,t_1,t_2$ whether $D$ contains a pair of arc-disjoint paths $P_1,P_2$ such that $P_i$ is an $(s_i,t_i)$-path. This problem is NP-complete for general digraphs but polynomially solvable for acyclic digraphs \cite{fortuneTCS10}. Recently it was shown \cite{bercziESA17} that if $D$ is equipped with a weight function $w$ on the arcs which satisfies that all edges have positive weight, then there is a polynomial algorithm for the variant of the weak-2-linkage problem when both paths have to be shortest paths in $D$. In this paper we consider the unit weight case and prove that for every pair constants $k_1,k_2$, there is a polynomial algorithm which decides whether the input digraph $D$ has a pair of arc-disjoint paths $P_1,P_2$ such that $P_i$ is an $(s_i,t_i)$-path and the length of $P_i$ is no more than $d(s_i,t_i)+k_i$, for $i=1,2$, where $d(s_i,t_i)$ denotes the length of the shortest $(s_i,t_i)$-path. We prove that, unless the exponential time hypothesis (ETH) fails, there is no polynomial algorithm for deciding the existence of a solution $P_1,P_2$ to the {\sc weak 2-linkage} problem where each path $P_i$ has length at most $d(s_i,t_i)+ c\log^{1+ε}{}n$ for some constant $c$. We also prove that the {\sc weak 2-linkage} problem remains NP-complete if we require one of the two paths to be a shortest path while the other path has no restriction on the length.

cs.CC↗

Spanning eulerian subdigraphs avoiding k prescribed arcs in tournaments

A digraph is {\bf eulerian} if it is connected and every vertex has its in-degree equal to its out-degree. Having a spanning eulerian subdigraph is thus a weakening of having a hamiltonian cycle. A digraph is {\bf semicomplete} if it has no pair of non-adjacent vertices. A {\bf tournament} is a semicomplete digraph without directed cycles of length 2. Fraise and Thomassen \cite{fraisseGC3} proved that every $(k+1)$-strong tournament has a hamiltonian cycle which avoids any prescribed set of $k$ arcs. In \cite{bangsupereuler} the authors demonstrated that a number of results concerning vertex-connectivity and hamiltonian cycles in tournaments and have analogues when we replace vertex connectivity by arc-connectivity and hamiltonian cycles by spanning eulerian subdigraphs. They showed the existence of a smallest function $f(k)$ such that every $f(k)$-arc-strong semicomplete digraph has a spanning eulerian subdigraph which avoids any prescribed set of $k$ arcs. They proved that $f(k)\leq \frac{(k+1)^2}{4}+1$ and also proved that $f(k)=k+1$ when $k=2,3$. Based on this they conjectured that $f(k)=k+1$ for all $k\geq 0$. In this paper we prove that $f(k)\leq (\lceil\frac{6k+1}{5}\rceil)$.

math.CO↗

Arc-disjoint Strong Spanning Subdigraphs of Semicomplete Compositions

A strong arc decomposition of a digraph $D=(V,A)$ is a decomposition of its arc set $A$ into two disjoint subsets $A_1$ and $A_2$ such that both of the spanning subdigraphs $D_1=(V,A_1)$ and $D_2=(V,A_2)$ are strong. Let $T$ be a digraph with $t$ vertices $u_1,\dots , u_t$ and let $H_1,\dots H_t$ be digraphs such that $H_i$ has vertices $u_{i,j_i},\ 1\le j_i\le n_i.$ Then the composition $Q=T[H_1,\dots , H_t]$ is a digraph with vertex set $\cup_{i=1}^t V(H_i)=\{u_{i,j_i}\mid 1\le i\le t, 1\le j_i\le n_i\}$ and arc set \[ \left(\cup^t_{i=1}A(H_i) \right) \cup \left( \cup_{u_iu_p\in A(T)} \{u_{ij_i}u_{pq_p} \mid 1\le j_i\le n_i, 1\le q_p\le n_p\} \right). \] We obtain a characterization of digraph compositions $Q=T[H_1,\dots H_t]$ which have a strong arc decomposition when $T$ is a semicomplete digraph and each $H_i$ is an arbitrary digraph. Our characterization generalizes a characterization by Bang-Jensen and Yeo (2003) of semicomplete digraphs with a strong arc decomposition and solves an open problem by Sun, Gutin and Ai (2018) on strong arc decompositions of digraph compositions $Q=T[H_1,\dots , H_t]$ in which $T$ is semicomplete and each $H_i$ is arbitrary. Our proofs are constructive and imply the existence of a polynomial algorithm for constructing a \good{} decomposition of a digraph $Q=T[H_1,\dots , H_t]$, with $T$ semicomplete, whenever such a decomposition exists.

cs.DM↗

Strong Subgraph $k$-connectivity

Generalized connectivity introduced by Hager (1985) has been studied extensively in undirected graphs and become an established area in undirected graph theory. For connectivity problems, directed graphs can be considered as generalizations of undirected graphs. In this paper, we introduce a natural extension of generalized $k$-connectivity of undirected graphs to directed graphs (we call it strong subgraph $k$-connectivity) by replacing connectivity with strong connectivity. We prove NP-completeness results and the existence of polynomial algorithms. We show that strong subgraph $k$--connectivity is, in a sense, harder to compute than generalized $k$-connectivity. However, strong subgraph $k$-connectivity can be computed in polynomial time for semicomplete digraphs and symmetric digraphs. We also provide sharp bounds on strong subgraph $k$-connectivity and pose some open questions.

cs.DM↗

Transversals in Uniform Linear Hypergraphs

The transversal number $τ(H)$ of a hypergraph $H$ is the minimum number of vertices that intersect every edge of $H$. A linear hypergraph is one in which every two distinct edges intersect in at most one vertex. A $k$-uniform hypergraph has all edges of size $k$. It is known that $τ(H) \le (n + m)/(k+1)$ holds for all $k$-uniform, linear hypergraphs $H$ when $k \in \{2,3\}$ or when $k \ge 4$ and the maximum degree of $H$ is at most two. It has been conjectured that $τ(H) \le (n+m)/(k+1)$ holds for all $k$-uniform, linear hypergraphs $H$. We disprove the conjecture for large $k$, and show that the best possible constant $c_k$ in the bound $τ(H) \le c_k (n+m)$ has order $\ln(k)/k$ for both linear (which we show in this paper) and non-linear hypergraphs. We show that for those $k$ where the conjecture holds, it is tight for a large number of densities if there exists an affine plane $AG(2,k)$ of order $k \ge 2$. We raise the problem to find the smallest value, $k_{\min}$, of $k$ for which the conjecture fails. We prove a general result, which when applied to a projective plane of order $331$ shows that $k_{\min} \le 166$. Even though the conjecture fails for large $k$, our main result is that it still holds for $k=4$, implying that $k_{\min} \ge 5$. The case $k=4$ is much more difficult than the cases $k \in \{2,3\}$, as the conjecture does not hold for general (non-linear) hypergraphs when $k=4$. Key to our proof is the completely new technique of the deficiency of a hypergraph introduced in this paper.

math.CO↗

Out-degree reducing partitions of digraphs

Let $k$ be a fixed integer. We determine the complexity of finding a $p$-partition $(V_1, \dots, V_p)$ of the vertex set of a given digraph such that the maximum out-degree of each of the digraphs induced by $V_i$, ($1\leq i\leq p$) is at least $k$ smaller than the maximum out-degree of $D$. We show that this problem is polynomial-time solvable when $p\geq 2k$ and ${\cal NP}$-complete otherwise. The result for $k=1$ and $p=2$ answers a question posed in \cite{bangTCS636}. We also determine, for all fixed non-negative integers $k_1,k_2,p$, the complexity of deciding whether a given digraph of maximum out-degree $p$ has a $2$-partition $(V_1,V_2)$ such that the digraph induced by $V_i$ has maximum out-degree at most $k_i$ for $i\in [2]$. It follows from this characterization that the problem of deciding whether a digraph has a 2-partition $(V_1,V_2)$ such that each vertex $v\in V_i$ has at least as many neighbours in the set $V_{3-i}$ as in $V_i$, for $i=1,2$ is ${\cal NP}$-complete. This solves a problem from \cite{kreutzerEJC24} on majority colourings.

cs.DM↗

Bipartite spanning sub(di)graphs induced by 2-partitions

For a given $2$-partition $(V_1,V_2)$ of the vertices of a (di)graph $G$, we study properties of the spanning bipartite subdigraph $B_G(V_1,V_2)$ of $G$ induced by those arcs/edges that have one end in each $V_i$. We determine, for all pairs of non-negative integers $k_1,k_2$, the complexity of deciding whether $G$ has a 2-partition $(V_1,V_2)$ such that each vertex in $V_i$ has at least $k_i$ (out-)neighbours in $V_{3-i}$. We prove that it is ${\cal NP}$-complete to decide whether a digraph $D$ has a 2-partition $(V_1,V_2)$ such that each vertex in $V_1$ has an out-neighbour in $V_2$ and each vertex in $V_2$ has an in-neighbour in $V_1$. The problem becomes polynomially solvable if we require $D$ to be strongly connected. We give a characterisation, based on the so-called strong component digraph of a non-strong digraph of the structure of ${\cal NP}$-complete instances in terms of their strong component digraph. When we want higher in-degree or out-degree to/from the other set the problem becomes ${\cal NP}$-complete even for strong digraphs. A further result is that it is ${\cal NP}$-complete to decide whether a given digraph $D$ has a $2$-partition $(V_1,V_2)$ such that $B_D(V_1,V_2)$ is strongly connected. This holds even if we require the input to be a highly connected eulerian digraph.

cs.DM↗

Every 4-regular 4-uniform hypergraph has a 2-coloring with a free vertex

In this paper, we continue the study of $2$-colorings in hypergraphs. A hypergraph is $2$-colorable if there is a $2$-coloring of the vertices with no monochromatic hyperedge. It is known (see Thomassen [J. Amer. Math. Soc. 5 (1992), 217--229]) that every $4$-uniform $4$-regular hypergraph is $2$-colorable. Our main result in this paper is a strengthening of this result. For this purpose, we define a vertex in a hypergraph $H$ to be a free vertex in $H$ if we can $2$-color $V(H) \setminus \{v\}$ such that every hyperedge in $H$ contains vertices of both colors (where $v$ has no color). We prove that every $4$-uniform $4$-regular hypergraph has a free vertex. This proves a known conjecture. Our proofs use a new result on not-all-equal $3$-SAT which is also proved in this paper and is of interest in its own right.

math.CO↗

Chinese Postman Problem on Edge-Colored Multigraphs

It is well-known that the Chinese postman problem on undirected and directed graphs is polynomial-time solvable. We extend this result to edge-colored multigraphs. Our result is in sharp contrast to the Chinese postman problem on mixed graphs, i.e., graphs with directed and undirected edges, for which the problem is NP-hard.

cs.DS↗

Acyclicity in Edge-Colored Graphs

A walk $W$ in edge-colored graphs is called properly colored (PC) if every pair of consecutive edges in $W$ is of different color. We introduce and study five types of PC acyclicity in edge-colored graphs such that graphs of PC acyclicity of type $i$ is a proper superset of graphs of acyclicity of type $i+1$, $i=1,2,3,4.$ The first three types are equivalent to the absence of PC cycles, PC trails, and PC walks, respectively. While graphs of types 1, 2 and 3 can be recognized in polynomial time, the problem of recognizing graphs of type 4 is, somewhat surprisingly, NP-hard even for 2-edge-colored graphs (i.e., when only two colors are used). The same problem with respect to type 5 is polynomial-time solvable for all edge-colored graphs. Using the five types, we investigate the border between intractability and tractability for the problems of finding the maximum number of internally vertex disjoint PC paths between two vertices and the minimum number of vertices to meet all PC paths between two vertices.

cs.DM↗

Tight lower bounds on the matching number in a graph with given maximum degree

Let $k \geq 3$. We prove the following three bounds for the matching number, $α'(G)$, of a graph, $G$, of order $n$ size $m$ and maximum degree at most $k$. If $k$ is odd, then $α'(G) \ge \left( \frac{k-1}{k(k^2 - 3)} \right) n \, + \, \left( \frac{k^2 - k - 2}{k(k^2 - 3)} \right) m \, - \, \frac{k-1}{k(k^2 - 3)}$. If $k$ is even, then $α'(G) \ge \frac{n}{k(k+1)} \, + \, \frac{m}{k+1} - \frac{1}{k}$. If $k$ is even, then $α'(G) \ge \left( \frac{k+2}{k^2+k+2} \right) m \, - \, \left( \frac{k-2}{k^2+k+2} \right) n \, - \frac{k+2}{k^2+k+2}$. In this paper we actually prove a slight strengthening of the above for which the bounds are tight for essentially all densities of graphs. The above three bounds are in fact powerful enough to give a complete description of the set $L_k$ of pairs $(γ,β)$ of real numbers with the following property. There exists a constant $K$ such that $α'(G) \geq γn + βm - K$ for every connected graph $G$ with maximum degree at most~$k$, where $n$ and $m$ denote the number of vertices and the number of edges, respectively, in $G$. We show that $L_k$ is a convex set. Further, if $k$ is odd, then $L_k$ is the intersection of two closed half-spaces, and there is exactly one extreme point of $L_k$, while if $k$ is even, then $L_k$ is the intersection of three closed half-spaces, and there are precisely two extreme points of $L_k$.

math.CO↗

Note on Perfect Forests in Digraphs

A spanning subgraph $F$ of a graph $G$ is called {\em perfect} if $F$ is a forest, the degree $d_F(x)$ of each vertex $x$ in $F$ is odd, and each tree of $F$ is an induced subgraph of $G$. Alex Scott (Graphs \& Combin., 2001) proved that every connected graph $G$ contains a perfect forest if and only if $G$ has an even number of vertices. We consider four generalizations to directed graphs of the concept of a perfect forest. While the problem of existence of the most straightforward one is NP-hard, for the three others this problem is polynomial-time solvable. Moreover, every digraph with only one strong component contains a directed forest of each of these three generalization types. One of our results extends Scott's theorem to digraphs in a non-trivial way.

cs.DM↗

Linear-Vertex Kernel for the Problem of Packing $r$-Stars into a Graph without Long Induced Paths

Let integers $r\ge 2$ and $d\ge 3$ be fixed. Let ${\cal G}_d$ be the set of graphs with no induced path on $d$ vertices. We study the problem of packing $k$ vertex-disjoint copies of $K_{1,r}$ ($k\ge 2$) into a graph $G$ from parameterized preprocessing, i.e., kernelization, point of view. We show that every graph $G\in {\cal G}_d$ can be reduced, in polynomial time, to a graph $G'\in {\cal G}_d$ with $O(k)$ vertices such that $G$ has at least $k$ vertex-disjoint copies of $K_{1,r}$ if and only if $G'$ has. Such a result is known for arbitrary graphs $G$ when $r=2$ and we conjecture that it holds for every $r\ge 2$.

cs.DS↗

Transversals in $4$-Uniform Hypergraphs

Let $H$ be a $3$-regular $4$-uniform hypergraph on $n$ vertices. The transversal number $τ(H)$ of $H$ is the minimum number of vertices that intersect every edge. Lai and Chang [J. Combin. Theory Ser. B 50 (1990), 129--133] proved that $τ(H) \le 7n/18$. Thomassé and Yeo [Combinatorica 27 (2007), 473--487] improved this bound and showed that $τ(H) \le 8n/21$. We provide a further improvement and prove that $τ(H) \le 3n/8$, which is best possible due to a hypergraph of order eight. More generally, we show that if $H$ is a $4$-uniform hypergraph on $n$ vertices and $m$ edges with maximum degree $Δ(H) \le 3$, then $τ(H) \le n/4 + m/6$, which proves a known conjecture. We show that an easy corollary of our main result is that the total domination number of a graph on $n$ vertices with minimum degree at least~4 is at most $3n/7$, which was the main result of the Thomassé-Yeo paper [Combinatorica 27 (2007), 473--487].

math.CO↗

Parameterized Rural Postman Problem

The Directed Rural Postman Problem (DRPP) can be formulated as follows: given a strongly connected directed multigraph $D=(V,A)$ with nonnegative integral weights on the arcs, a subset $R$ of $A$ and a nonnegative integer $\ell$, decide whether $D$ has a closed directed walk containing every arc of $R$ and of total weight at most $\ell$. Let $k$ be the number of weakly connected components in the the subgraph of $D$ induced by $R$. Sorge et al. (2012) ask whether the DRPP is fixed-parameter tractable (FPT) when parameterized by $k$, i.e., whether there is an algorithm of running time $O^*(f(k))$ where $f$ is a function of $k$ only and the $O^*$ notation suppresses polynomial factors. Sorge et al. (2012) note that this question is of significant practical relevance and has been open for more than thirty years. Using an algebraic approach, we prove that DRPP has a randomized algorithm of running time $O^*(2^k)$ when $\ell$ is bounded by a polynomial in the number of vertices in $D$. We also show that the same result holds for the undirected version of DRPP, where $D$ is a connected undirected multigraph.

cs.DS↗

Parameterized Complexity of k-Chinese Postman Problem

We consider the following problem called the $k$-Chinese Postman Problem ($k$-CPP): given a connected edge-weighted graph $G$ and integers $p$ and $k$, decide whether there are at least $k$ closed walks such that every edge of $G$ is contained in at least one of them and the total weight of the edges in the walks is at most $p$? The problem $k$-CPP is NP-complete, and van Bevern et al. (to appear) and Sorge (2013) asked whether the $k$-CPP is fixed-parameter tractable when parameterized by $k$. We prove that the $k$-CPP is indeed fixed-parameter tractable. In fact, we prove a stronger result: the problem admits a kernel with $O(k^2\log k)$ vertices. We prove that the directed version of $k$-CPP is NP-complete and ask whether the directed version is fixed-parameter tractable when parameterized by $k$.

cs.DS↗

Total Transversals and Total Domination in Uniform Hypergraphs

The first three authors [European J. Combin. 33 (2012), 62--71] established a relationship between the transversal number and the domination number of uniform hypergraphs. In this paper, we establish a relationship between the total transversal number and the total domination number of uniform hypergraphs. We prove tight asymptotic upper bounds on the total transversal number in terms of the number of vertices, the number of edges, and the edge size.

math.CO↗