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Fedor V. Fomin

Publications and source records attributed to Fedor V. Fomin.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

Parameterized and Approximation Algorithms for the Maximum Bimodal Subgraph Problem

A vertex of a plane digraph is bimodal if all its incoming edges (and hence all its outgoing edges) are consecutive in the cyclic order around it. A plane digraph is bimodal if all its vertices are bimodal. Bimodality is at the heart of many types of graph layouts, such as upward drawings, level-planar drawings, and L-drawings. If the graph is not bimodal, the Maximum Bimodal Subgraph (MBS) problem asks for an embedding-preserving bimodal subgraph with the maximum number of edges. We initiate the study of the MBS problem from the parameterized complexity perspective with two main results: (i) we describe an FPT algorithm parameterized by the branchwidth (and hence by the treewidth) of the graph; (ii) we establish that MBS parameterized by the number of non-bimodal vertices admits a polynomial kernel. As the byproduct of these results, we obtain a subexponential FPT algorithm and an efficient polynomial-time approximation scheme for MBS.

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Kernelization for Spreading Points

We consider the following problem about dispersing points. Given a set of points in the plane, the task is to identify whether by moving a small number of points by small distance, we can obtain an arrangement of points such that no pair of points is ``close" to each other. More precisely, for a family of $n$ points, an integer $k$, and a real number $d > 0$, we ask whether at most $k$ points could be relocated, each point at distance at most $d$ from its original location, such that the distance between each pair of points is at least a fixed constant, say $1$. A number of approximation algorithms for variants of this problem, under different names like distant representatives, disk dispersing, or point spreading, are known in the literature. However, to the best of our knowledge, the parameterized complexity of this problem remains widely unexplored. We make the first step in this direction by providing a kernelization algorithm that, in polynomial time, produces an equivalent instance with $O(d^2k^3)$ points. As a byproduct of this result, we also design a non-trivial fixed-parameter tractable (FPT) algorithm for the problem, parameterized by $k$ and $d$. Finally, we complement the result about polynomial kernelization by showing a lower bound that rules out the existence of a kernel whose size is polynomial in $k$ alone, unless $\mathsf{NP} \subseteq \mathsf{coNP}/\text{poly}$.

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Lossy Kernelization for (Implicit) Hitting Set Problems

We re-visit the complexity of kernelization for the $d$-Hitting Set problem. This is a classic problem in Parameterized Complexity, which encompasses several other of the most well-studied problems in this field, such as Vertex Cover, Feedback Vertex Set in Tournaments (FVST) and Cluster Vertex Deletion (CVD). In fact, $d$-Hitting Set encompasses any deletion problem to a hereditary property that can be characterized by a finite set of forbidden induced subgraphs. With respect to bit size, the kernelization complexity of $d$-Hitting Set is essentially settled: there exists a kernel with $O(k^d)$ bits ($O(k^d)$ sets and $O(k^{d-1})$ elements) and this it tight by the result of Dell and van Melkebeek [STOC 2010, JACM 2014]. Still, the question of whether there exists a kernel for $d$-Hitting Set with fewer elements has remained one of the most major open problems~in~Kernelization. In this paper, we first show that if we allow the kernelization to be lossy with a qualitatively better loss than the best possible approximation ratio of polynomial time approximation algorithms, then one can obtain kernels where the number of elements is linear for every fixed $d$. Further, based on this, we present our main result: we show that there exist approximate Turing kernelizations for $d$-Hitting Set that even beat the established bit-size lower bounds for exact kernelizations -- in fact, we use a constant number of oracle calls, each with ``near linear'' ($O(k^{1+ε})$) bit size, that is, almost the best one could hope for. Lastly, for two special cases of implicit 3-Hitting set, namely, FVST and CVD, we obtain the ``best of both worlds'' type of results -- $(1+ε)$-approximate kernelizations with a linear number of vertices. In terms of size, this substantially improves the exact kernels of Fomin et al. [SODA 2018, TALG 2019], with simpler arguments.

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Turán's Theorem Through Algorithmic Lens

The fundamental theorem of Turán from Extremal Graph Theory determines the exact bound on the number of edges $t_r(n)$ in an $n$-vertex graph that does not contain a clique of size $r+1$. We establish an interesting link between Extremal Graph Theory and Algorithms by providing a simple compression algorithm that in linear time reduces the problem of finding a clique of size $\ell$ in an $n$-vertex graph $G$ with $m \ge t_r(n)-k$ edges, where $\ell\leq r+1$, to the problem of finding a maximum clique in a graph on at most $5k$ vertices. This also gives us an algorithm deciding in time $2.49^{k}\cdot(n + m)$ whether $G$ has a clique of size $\ell$. As a byproduct of the new compression algorithm, we give an algorithm that in time $2^{\mathcal{O}(td^2)} \cdot n^2$ decides whether a graph contains an independent set of size at least $n/(d+1) + t$. Here $d$ is the average vertex degree of the graph $G$. The multivariate complexity analysis based on ETH indicates that the asymptotical dependence on several parameters in the running times of our algorithms is tight.

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Parameterized Complexity of Broadcasting in Graphs

The task of the broadcast problem is, given a graph G and a source vertex s, to compute the minimum number of rounds required to disseminate a piece of information from s to all vertices in the graph. It is assumed that, at each round, an informed vertex can transmit the information to at most one of its neighbors. The broadcast problem is known to NP-hard. We show that the problem is FPT when parametrized by the size k of a feedback edge-set, or by the size k of a vertex-cover, or by k=n-t where t is the input deadline for the broadcast protocol to complete.

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Computing paths of large rank in planar frameworks deterministically

A framework consists of an undirected graph $G$ and a matroid $M$ whose elements correspond to the vertices of $G$. Recently, Fomin et al. [SODA 2023] and Eiben et al. [ArXiV 2023] developed parameterized algorithms for computing paths of rank $k$ in frameworks. More precisely, for vertices $s$ and $t$ of $G$, and an integer $k$, they gave FPT algorithms parameterized by $k$ deciding whether there is an $(s,t)$-path in $G$ whose vertex set contains a subset of elements of $M$ of rank $k$. These algorithms are based on Schwartz-Zippel lemma for polynomial identity testing and thus are randomized, and therefore the existence of a deterministic FPT algorithm for this problem remains open. We present the first deterministic FPT algorithm that solves the problem in frameworks whose underlying graph $G$ is planar. While the running time of our algorithm is worse than the running times of the recent randomized algorithms, our algorithm works on more general classes of matroids. In particular, this is the first FPT algorithm for the case when matroid $M$ is represented over rationals. Our main technical contribution is the nontrivial adaptation of the classic irrelevant vertex technique to frameworks to reduce the given instance to one of bounded treewidth. This allows us to employ the toolbox of representative sets to design a dynamic programming procedure solving the problem efficiently on instances of bounded treewidth.

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Two-sets cut-uncut on planar graphs

We study the following Two-Sets Cut-Uncut problem on planar graphs. Therein, one is given an undirected planar graph $G$ and two sets of vertices $S$ and $T$. The question is, what is the minimum number of edges to remove from $G$, such that we separate all of $S$ from all of $T$, while maintaining that every vertex in $S$, and respectively in $T$, stays in the same connected component. We show that this problem can be solved in time $2^{|S|+|T|} n^{O(1)}$ with a one-sided error randomized algorithm. Our algorithm implies a polynomial-time algorithm for the network diversion problem on planar graphs, which resolves an open question from the literature. More generally, we show that Two-Sets Cut-Uncut remains fixed-parameter tractable even when parameterized by the number $r$ of faces in the plane graph covering the terminals $S \cup T$, by providing an algorithm of running time $4^{r + O(\sqrt r)} n^{O(1)}$.

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Coresets for Clustering in Geometric Intersection Graphs

Designing coresets--small-space sketches of the data preserving cost of the solutions within $(1\pm ε)$-approximate factor--is an important research direction in the study of center-based $k$-clustering problems, such as $k$-means or $k$-median. Feldman and Langberg [STOC'11] have shown that for $k$-clustering of $n$ points in general metrics, it is possible to obtain coresets whose size depends logarithmically in $n$. Moreover, such a dependency in $n$ is inevitable in general metrics. A significant amount of recent work in the area is devoted to obtaining coresests whose sizes are independent of $n$ (i.e., ``small'' coresets) for special metrics, like $d$-dimensional Euclidean spaces, doubling metrics, metrics of graphs of bounded treewidth, or those excluding a fixed minor. In this paper, we provide the first constructions of small coresets for $k$-clustering in the metrics induced by geometric intersection graphs, such as Euclidean-weighted Unit Disk/Square Graphs. These constructions follow from a general theorem that identifies two canonical properties of a graph metric sufficient for obtaining small coresets. The proof of our theorem builds on the recent work of Cohen-Addad, Saulpic, and Schwiegelshohn [STOC '21], which ensures small-sized coresets conditioned on the existence of an interesting set of centers, called ``centroid set''. The main technical contribution of our work is the proof of the existence of such a small-sized centroid set for graphs that satisfy the two canonical geometric properties. The new coreset construction helps to design the first $(1+ε)$-approximation for center-based clustering problems in UDGs and USGs, that is fixed-parameter tractable in $k$ and $ε$ (FPT-AS).

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Kernelizing Temporal Exploration Problems

We study the kernelization of exploration problems on temporal graphs. A temporal graph consists of a finite sequence of snapshot graphs $\mathcal{G}=(G_1, G_2, \dots, G_L)$ that share a common vertex set but might have different edge sets. The non-strict temporal exploration problem (NS-TEXP for short) introduced by Erlebach and Spooner, asks if a single agent can visit all vertices of a given temporal graph where the edges traversed by the agent are present in non-strict monotonous time steps, i.e., the agent can move along the edges of a snapshot graph with infinite speed. The exploration must at the latest be completed in the last snapshot graph. The optimization variant of this problem is the $k$-arb NS-TEXP problem, where the agent's task is to visit at least $k$ vertices of the temporal graph. We show that under standard computational complexity assumptions, neither of the problems NS-TEXP nor $k$-arb NS-TEXP allow for polynomial kernels in the standard parameters: number of vertices $n$, lifetime $L$, number of vertices to visit $k$, and maximal number of connected components per time step $γ$; as well as in the combined parameters $L+k$, $L + γ$, and $k+γ$. On the way to establishing these lower bounds, we answer a couple of questions left open by Erlebach and Spooner. We also initiate the study of structural kernelization by identifying a new parameter of a temporal graph $p(\mathcal{G}) = \sum_{i=1}^{L} (|E(G_i)|) - |V(G)| +1$. Informally, this parameter measures how dynamic the temporal graph is. Our main algorithmic result is the construction of a polynomial (in $p(\mathcal{G})$) kernel for the more general Weighted $k$-arb NS-TEXP problem, where weights are assigned to the vertices and the task is to find a temporal walk of weight at least $k$.

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Proportionally Fair Matching with Multiple Groups

The study of fair algorithms has become mainstream in machine learning and artificial intelligence due to its increasing demand in dealing with biases and discrimination. Along this line, researchers have considered fair versions of traditional optimization problems including clustering, regression, ranking and voting. However, most of the efforts have been channeled into designing heuristic algorithms, which often do not provide any guarantees on the quality of the solution. In this work, we study matching problems with the notion of proportional fairness. Proportional fairness is one of the most popular notions of group fairness where every group is represented up to an extent proportional to the final selection size. Matching with proportional fairness or more commonly, proportionally fair matching, was introduced in [Chierichetti et al., AISTATS, 2019], where the problem was studied with only two groups. However, in many practical applications, the number of groups -- although often a small constant -- is larger than two. In this work, we make the first step towards understanding the computational complexity of proportionally fair matching with more than two groups. We design exact and approximation algorithms achieving reasonable guarantees on the quality of the matching as well as on the time complexity. Our algorithms are also supported by suitable hardness bounds.

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(Re)packing Equal Disks into Rectangle

The problem of packing of equal disks (or circles) into a rectangle is a fundamental geometric problem. (By a packing here we mean an arrangement of disks in a rectangle without overlapping.) We consider the following algorithmic generalization of the equal disk packing problem. In this problem, for a given packing of equal disks into a rectangle, the question is whether by changing positions of a small number of disks, we can allocate space for packing more disks. More formally, in the repacking problem, for a given set of $n$ equal disks packed into a rectangle and integers $k$ and $h$, we ask whether it is possible by changing positions of at most $h$ disks to pack $n+k$ disks. Thus the problem of packing equal disks is the special case of our problem with $n=h=0$. While the computational complexity of packing equal disks into a rectangle remains open, we prove that the repacking problem is NP-hard already for $h=0$. Our main algorithmic contribution is an algorithm that solves the repacking problem in time $(h+k)^{O(h+k)}\cdot |I|^{O(1)}$, where $I$ is the input size. That is, the problem is fixed-parameter tractable parameterized by $k$ and $h$.

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Shortest Cycles With Monotone Submodular Costs

We introduce the following submodular generalization of the Shortest Cycle problem. For a nonnegative monotone submodular cost function $f$ defined on the edges (or the vertices) of an undirected graph $G$, we seek for a cycle $C$ in $G$ of minimum cost $\textsf{OPT}=f(C)$. We give an algorithm that given an $n$-vertex graph $G$, parameter $\varepsilon > 0$, and the function $f$ represented by an oracle, in time $n^{\mathcal{O}(\log 1/\varepsilon)}$ finds a cycle $C$ in $G$ with $f(C)\leq (1+\varepsilon)\cdot \textsf{OPT}$. This is in sharp contrast with the non-approximability of the closely related Monotone Submodular Shortest $(s,t)$-Path problem, which requires exponentially many queries to the oracle for finding an $n^{2/3-\varepsilon}$-approximation [Goel et al., FOCS 2009]. We complement our algorithm with a matching lower bound. We show that for every $\varepsilon > 0$, obtaining a $(1+\varepsilon)$-approximation requires at least $n^{Ω(\log 1/ \varepsilon)}$ queries to the oracle. When the function $f$ is integer-valued, our algorithm yields that a cycle of cost $\textsf{OPT}$ can be found in time $n^{\mathcal{O}(\log \textsf{OPT})}$. In particular, for $\textsf{OPT}=n^{\mathcal{O}(1)}$ this gives a quasipolynomial-time algorithm computing a cycle of minimum submodular cost. Interestingly, while a quasipolynomial-time algorithm often serves as a good indication that a polynomial time complexity could be achieved, we show a lower bound that $n^{\mathcal{O}(\log n)}$ queries are required even when $\textsf{OPT} = \mathcal{O}(n)$.

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An Algorithmic Meta-Theorem for Graph Modification to Planarity and FOL

In general, a graph modification problem is defined by a graph modification operation $\boxtimes$ and a target graph property ${\cal P}$. Typically, the modification operation $\boxtimes$ may be vertex removal}, edge removal}, edge contraction}, or edge addition and the question is, given a graph $G$ and an integer $k$, whether it is possible to transform $G$ to a graph in ${\cal P}$ after applying $k$ times the operation $\boxtimes$ on $G$. This problem has been extensively studied for particilar instantiations of $\boxtimes$ and ${\cal P}$. In this paper we consider the general property ${\cal P}_{ϕ}$ of being planar and, moreover, being a model of some First-Order Logic sentence $ϕ$ (an FOL-sentence). We call the corresponding meta-problem Graph $\boxtimes$-Modification to Planarity and $ϕ$ and prove the following algorithmic meta-theorem: there exists a function $f:\Bbb{N}^{2}\to\Bbb{N}$ such that, for every $\boxtimes$ and every FOL sentence $ϕ$, the Graph $\boxtimes$-Modification to Planarity and $ϕ$ is solvable in $f(k,|ϕ|)\cdot n^2$ time. The proof constitutes a hybrid of two different classic techniques in graph algorithms. The first is the irrelevant vertex technique that is typically used in the context of Graph Minors and deals with properties such as planarity or surface-embeddability (that are not FOL-expressible) and the second is the use of Gaifman's Locality Theorem that is the theoretical base for the meta-algorithmic study of FOL-expressible problems.

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Compound Logics for Modification Problems

We introduce a novel model-theoretic framework inspired from graph modification and based on the interplay between model theory and algorithmic graph minors. The core of our framework is a new compound logic operating with two types of sentences, expressing graph modification: the modulator sentence, defining some property of the modified part of the graph, and the target sentence, defining some property of the resulting graph. In our framework, modulator sentences are in counting monadic second-order logic (CMSOL) and have models of bounded treewidth, while target sentences express first-order logic (FOL) properties along with minor-exclusion. Our logic captures problems that are not definable in first-order logic and, moreover, may have instances of unbounded treewidth. Also, it permits the modeling of wide families of problems involving vertex/edge removals, alternative modulator measures (such as elimination distance or $\mathcal{G}$-treewidth), multistage modifications, and various cut problems. Our main result is that, for this compound logic, model-checking can be done in quadratic time. All derived algorithms are constructive and this, as a byproduct, extends the constructibility horizon of the algorithmic applications of the Graph Minors theorem of Robertson and Seymour. The proposed logic can be seen as a general framework to capitalize on the potential of the irrelevant vertex technique. It gives a way to deal with problem instances of unbounded treewidth, for which Courcelle's theorem does not apply. The proof of our meta-theorem combines novel combinatorial results related to the Flat Wall theorem along with elements of the proof of Courcelle's theorem and Gaifman's theorem. We finally prove extensions where the target property is expressible in FOL+DP, i.e., the enhancement of FOL with disjoint-paths predicates.

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Exact Exponential Algorithms for Clustering Problems

In this paper we initiate a systematic study of exact algorithms for well-known clustering problems, namely $k$-Median and $k$-Means. In $k$-Median, the input consists of a set $X$ of $n$ points belonging to a metric space, and the task is to select a subset $C \subseteq X$ of $k$ points as centers, such that the sum of the distances of every point to its nearest center is minimized. In $k$-Means, the objective is to minimize the sum of squares of the distances instead. It is easy to design an algorithm running in time $\max_{k\leq n} {n \choose k} n^{O(1)} = O^*(2^n)$ ($O^*(\cdot)$ notation hides polynomial factors in $n$). We design first non-trivial exact algorithms for these problems. In particular, we obtain an $O^*((1.89)^n)$ time exact algorithm for $k$-Median that works for any value of $k$. Our algorithm is quite general in that it does not use any properties of the underlying (metric) space -- it does not even require the distances to satisfy the triangle inequality. In particular, the same algorithm also works for $k$-Means. We complement this result by showing that the running time of our algorithm is asymptotically optimal, up to the base of the exponent. That is, unless ETH fails, there is no algorithm for these problems running in time $2^{o(n)} \cdot n^{O(1)}$. Finally, we consider the "supplier" versions of these clustering problems, where, in addition to the set $X$ we are additionally given a set of $m$ candidate centers $F$, and objective is to find a subset of $k$ centers from $F$. The goal is still to minimize the $k$-Median/$k$-Means/$k$-Center objective. For these versions we give a $O(2^n (mn)^{O(1)})$ time algorithms using subset convolution. We complement this result by showing that, under the Set Cover Conjecture, the supplier versions of these problems do not admit an exact algorithm running in time $2^{(1-ε) n} (mn)^{O(1)}$.

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Fixed-Parameter Tractability of Maximum Colored Path and Beyond

We introduce a general method for obtaining fixed-parameter algorithms for problems about finding paths in undirected graphs, where the length of the path could be unbounded in the parameter. The first application of our method is as follows. We give a randomized algorithm, that given a colored $n$-vertex undirected graph, vertices $s$ and $t$, and an integer $k$, finds an $(s,t)$-path containing at least $k$ different colors in time $2^k n^{O(1)}$. This is the first FPT algorithm for this problem, and it generalizes the algorithm of Björklund, Husfeldt, and Taslaman [SODA 2012] on finding a path through $k$ specified vertices. It also implies the first $2^k n^{O(1)}$ time algorithm for finding an $(s,t)$-path of length at least $k$. Our method yields FPT algorithms for even more general problems. For example, we consider the problem where the input consists of an $n$-vertex undirected graph $G$, a matroid $M$ whose elements correspond to the vertices of $G$ and which is represented over a finite field of order $q$, a positive integer weight function on the vertices of $G$, two sets of vertices $S,T \subseteq V(G)$, and integers $p,k,w$, and the task is to find $p$ vertex-disjoint paths from $S$ to $T$ so that the union of the vertices of these paths contains an independent set of $M$ of cardinality $k$ and weight $w$, while minimizing the sum of the lengths of the paths. We give a $2^{p+O(k^2 \log (q+k))} n^{O(1)} w$ time randomized algorithm for this problem.

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Longest Cycle above Erdős-Gallai Bound

In 1959, Erdős and Gallai proved that every graph G with average vertex degree ad(G)\geq 2 contains a cycle of length at least ad(G). We provide an algorithm that for k\geq 0 in time 2^{O(k)} n^{O(1)} decides whether a 2-connected n-vertex graph G contains a cycle of length at least ad(G)+k. This resolves an open problem explicitly mentioned in several papers. The main ingredients of our algorithm are new graph-theoretical results interesting on their own.

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Detours in Directed Graphs

We study two "above guarantee" versions of the classical Longest Path problem on undirected and directed graphs and obtain the following results. In the first variant of Longest Path that we study, called Longest Detour, the task is to decide whether a graph has an (s,t)-path of length at least dist_G(s,t)+k (where dist_G(s,t) denotes the length of a shortest path from s to t). Bezáková et al. proved that on undirected graphs the problem is fixed-parameter tractable (FPT) by providing an algorithm of running time 2^{O (k)} n. Further, they left the parameterized complexity of the problem on directed graphs open. Our first main result establishes a connection between Longest Detour on directed graphs and 3-Disjoint Paths on directed graphs. Using these new insights, we design a 2^{O(k)} n^{O(1)} time algorithm for the problem on directed planar graphs. Further, the new approach yields a significantly faster FPT algorithm on undirected graphs. In the second variant of Longest Path, namely Longest Path Above Diameter, the task is to decide whether the graph has a path of length at least diam(G)+k (diam(G) denotes the length of a longest shortest path in a graph G). We obtain dichotomy results about Longest Path Above Diameter on undirected and directed graphs. For (un)directed graphs, Longest Path Above Diameter is NP-complete even for k=1. However, if the input undirected graph is 2-connected, then the problem is FPT. On the other hand, for 2-connected directed graphs, we show that Longest Path Above Diameter is solvable in polynomial time for each k\in{1,\dots, 4} and is NP-complete for every k\geq 5. The parameterized complexity of Longest Path Above Diameter on general directed graphs remains an interesting open problem.

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