arXiv subjects

Lapo Cioni

Publications and source records attributed to Lapo Cioni.

9 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Temporal Path Covers: Dilworth Properties and Parameterized Complexity

The Minimum Temporal Path Cover (TPC) and Minimum Temporally Disjoint Path Cover (TDPC) problems were introduced by [Chakraborty, Dailly, Foucaud, Klasing, MFCS '24]. Both were shown to be NP-hard on temporal DAGs, while the latter is also NP-hard on temporal oriented trees. All tractable cases for T(D)PC established in that paper satisfy a temporal Dilworth property, namely that the size of the minimum T(D)PC is equal to the size of the maximum antichain. This raises a natural question: is T(D)PC polynomial-time solvable under the promise that the respective Dilworth property holds? In this work, we answer this question in the affirmative for both problems, proving in fact that, under the respective promise, the size of the minimum T(D)PC is exactly equal to the Lov\'asz number of the connectivity graph. In another direction, we establish parameterized algorithms and hardness results for TPC and TDPC. Our main result is that TPC is W[1]-hard parameterized by the deletion distance to linear forest even for temporal graphs with two time-steps, answering in the negative an open question by Chakraborty et al. about whether an XP algorithm parameterized by treewidth plus number of time-steps can be improved to FPT. On the other hand, we prove that an FPT algorithm does exist if the vertex cover number is used as parameter instead of the treewidth in the above parameterization. We complement this with a proof that including the number of time-steps in the parameter is necessary to yield tractability, as, otherwise, both TPC and TDPC remain NP-hard even for constant vertex cover size. Along the way, we establish various other para-NP-hardness results involving structural parameters such as the pathwidth and the maximum degree of the underlying graph.

cs.DS↗

arXiv2025

Matching and Edge Cover in Temporal Graphs

Temporal graphs are a special class of graphs for which a temporal component is added to edges, that is, each edge possesses a set of times at which it is available and can be traversed. Many classical problems on graphs can be translated to temporal graphs, and the results may differ. In this paper, we define the Temporal Edge Cover and Temporal Matching problems and show that they are NP-complete even when fixing the lifetime or when the underlying graph is a tree. We then describe two FPT algorithms, with parameters lifetime and treewidth, that solve the two problems. We also find lower bounds for the approximation of the two problems and give two approximation algorithms which match these bounds. Finally, we discuss the differences between the problems in the temporal and the static framework.

cs.DS↗

arXiv2025

Sorting permutations using a pop stack with a bypass

We introduce a new sorting device for permutations which makes use of a pop stack augmented with a bypass operation. This results in a sorting machine, which is more powerful than the usual Popstacksort algorithm and seems to have never been investigated previously. In the present paper, we give a characterization of sortable permutations in terms of forbidden patterns and reinterpret the resulting enumerating sequence using a class of restricted Motzkin paths. Moreover, we describe an algorithm to compute the set of all preimages of a given permutation, thanks to which we characterize permutations having a small number of preimages. Finally, we provide a full description of the preimages of principal classes of permutations, and we discuss the device consisting of two pop stacks in parallel, again with a bypass operation.

cs.DM↗

arXiv2024

Pop Stacks with a Bypass

We consider sorting procedures for permutations making use of pop stacks with a bypass operation, and explore the combinatorial properties of the associated algorithms.

cs.DM↗

arXiv2024

The interval posets of permutations seen from the decomposition tree perspective

The interval poset of a permutation is the set of intervals of a permutation, ordered with respect to inclusion. It has been introduced and studied recently in [B. Tenner, arXiv:2007.06142]. We study this poset from the perspective of the decomposition trees of permutations, describing a procedure to obtain the former from the latter. We then give alternative proofs of some of the results in [B. Tenner, arXiv:2007.06142], and we solve the open problems that it posed (and some other enumerative problems) using techniques from symbolic and analytic combinatorics. Finally, we compute the Möbius function on such posets.

math.CO↗

arXiv2022

Preimages under the bubblesort operator

We study preimages of permutations under the bubblesort operator $\mathbf{B}$. We achieve a description of these preimages much more complete than what is known for the more complicated sorting operators $\mathbf{S}$ (stacksort) and $\mathbf{Q}$ (queuesort). We describe explicitly the set of preimages under $\mathbf{B}$ of any permutation $π$ from the left-to-right maxima of $π$, showing that there are $2^{k-1}$ such preimages if $k$ is the number of these left-to-right maxima. We further consider, for each $n$, the tree $T_n$ recording all permutations of size $n$ in its nodes, in which an edge from child to parent corresponds to an application of $\mathbf{B}$ (the root being the identity permutation), and we present several properties of these trees. In particular, for each permutation $π$, we show how the subtree of $T_n$ rooted at $π$ is determined by the number of left-to-right maxima of $π$ and the length of the longest suffix of left-to-right maxima of $π$. Building on this result, we determine the number of nodes and leaves at every height in such trees, and we recover (resp. obtain) the average height of nodes (resp. leaves) in $T_n$.

math.CO↗

arXiv2021

Preimages under the Queuesort algorithm

Following the footprints of what have been done with the algorithm Stacksort, we investigate the preimages of the map associated with a slightly less well known algorithm, called Queuesort. After having described an equivalent version of Queuesort, we provide a recursive description of the set of all preimages of a given permutation, which can be also translated into a recursive procedure to effectively find such preimages. We then deal with some enumerative issues. More specifically, we investigate the cardinality of the set of preimages of a given permutation, showing that all cardinalities are possible, except for 3. We also give exact enumeration results for the number of permutations having 0,1 and 2 preimages. Finally, we consider the special case of those permutations $π$ whose set of left-to-right maxima is the disjoint union of a prefix and a suffix of $π$: we determine a closed formula for the number of preimages of such permutations, which involves two different incarnations of ballot numbers, and we show that our formula can be expressed as a linear combination of Catalan numbers.

math.CO↗

arXiv2019

Stack Sorting with Increasing and Decreasing Stacks

We introduce a sorting machine consisting of $k+1$ stacks in series: the first $k$ stacks can only contain elements in decreasing order from top to bottom, while the last one has the opposite restriction. This device generalizes \cite{SM}, which studies the case $k=1$. Here we show that, for $k=2$, the set of sortable permutations is a class with infinite basis, by explicitly finding an antichain of minimal nonsortable permutations. This construction can easily be adapted to each $k \ge 3$. Next we describe an optimal sorting algorithm, again for the case $k=2$. We then analyze two types of left-greedy sorting procedures, obtaining complete results in one case and only some partial results in the other one. We close the paper by discussing a few open questions.

cs.DS↗

arXiv2018

Enumerative Results on the Schröder Pattern Poset

The set of Schröder words (Schröder language) is endowed with a natural partial order, which can be conveniently described by interpreting Schröder words as lattice paths. The resulting poset is called the Schröder pattern poset. We find closed formulas for the number of Schröder words covering/covered by a given Schröder word in terms of classical parameters of the associated Schröder path. We also enumerate several classes of Schröder avoiding words (with respect to the length), i.e. sets of Schröder words which do not contain a given Schröder word.

math.CO↗