arXiv subjects

Robert Ganian

Publications and source records attributed to Robert Ganian.

104 records · Page 6Linked to original sources

arXiv2015

On the Complexity of Rainbow Coloring Problems

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.

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arXiv2015

Discovering Archipelagos of Tractability for Constraint Satisfaction and Counting

The Constraint Satisfaction Problem (CSP) is a central and generic computational problem which provides a common framework for many theoretical and practical applications. A central line of research is concerned with the identification of classes of instances for which CSP can be solved in polynomial time; such classes are often called "islands of tractability." A prominent way of defining islands of tractability for CSP is to restrict the relations that may occur in the constraints to a fixed set, called a constraint language, whereas a constraint language is conservative if it contains all unary relations. This paper addresses the general limit of the mentioned tractability results for CSP and #CSP, that they only apply to instances where all constraints belong to a single tractable language (in general, the union of two tractable languages isn't tractable). We show that we can overcome this limitation as long as we keep some control of how constraints over the various considered tractable languages interact with each other. For this purpose we utilize the notion of a \emph{strong backdoor} of a CSP instance, as introduced by Williams et al. (IJCAI 2003), which is a set of variables that when instantiated moves the instance to an island of tractability, i.e., to a tractable class of instances. In this paper, we consider strong backdoors into \emph{scattered classes}, consisting of CSP instances where each connected component belongs entirely to some class from a list of tractable classes. Our main result is an algorithm that, given a CSP instance with $n$ variables, finds in time $f(k)n^{O(1)}$ a strong backdoor into a scattered class (associated with a list of finite conservative constraint languages) of size $k$ or correctly decides that there isn't such a backdoor.

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arXiv2015

Solving Problems on Graphs of High Rank-Width

A modulator of a graph G to a specified graph class H is a set of vertices whose deletion puts G into H. The cardinality of a modulator to various tractable graph classes has long been used as a structural parameter which can be exploited to obtain FPT algorithms for a range of hard problems. Here we investigate what happens when a graph contains a modulator which is large but "well-structured" (in the sense of having bounded rank-width). Can such modulators still be exploited to obtain efficient algorithms? And is it even possible to find such modulators efficiently? We first show that the parameters derived from such well-structured modulators are strictly more general than the cardinality of modulators and rank-width itself. Then, we develop an FPT algorithm for finding such well-structured modulators to any graph class which can be characterized by a finite set of forbidden induced subgraphs. We proceed by showing how well-structured modulators can be used to obtain efficient parameterized algorithms for Minimum Vertex Cover and Maximum Clique. Finally, we use well-structured modulators to develop an algorithmic meta-theorem for deciding problems expressible in Monadic Second Order (MSO) logic, and prove that this result is tight in the sense that it cannot be generalized to LinEMSO problems.

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arXiv2015

Meta-Kernelization using Well-Structured Modulators

Kernelization investigates exact preprocessing algorithms with performance guarantees. The most prevalent type of parameters used in kernelization is the solution size for optimization problems; however, also structural parameters have been successfully used to obtain polynomial kernels for a wide range of problems. Many of these parameters can be defined as the size of a smallest modulator of the given graph into a fixed graph class (i.e., a set of vertices whose deletion puts the graph into the graph class). Such parameters admit the construction of polynomial kernels even when the solution size is large or not applicable. This work follows up on the research on meta-kernelization frameworks in terms of structural parameters. We develop a class of parameters which are based on a more general view on modulators: instead of size, the parameters employ a combination of rank-width and split decompositions to measure structure inside the modulator. This allows us to lift kernelization results from modulator-size to more general parameters, hence providing smaller kernels. We show (i) how such large but well-structured modulators can be efficiently approximated, (ii) how they can be used to obtain polynomial kernels for any graph problem expressible in Monadic Second Order logic, and (iii) how they allow the extension of previous results in the area of structural meta-kernelization.

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arXiv2015

Polynomial-time Construction of Optimal Tree-structured Communication Data Layout Descriptions

We show that the problem of constructing tree-structured descriptions of data layouts that are optimal with respect to space or other criteria from given sequences of displacements, can be solved in polynomial time. The problem is relevant for efficient compiler and library support for communication of noncontiguous data, where tree-structured descriptions with low-degree nodes and small index arrays are beneficial for the communication soft- and hardware. An important example is the Message-Passing Interface (MPI) which has a mechanism for describing arbitrary data layouts as trees using a set of increasingly general constructors. Our algorithm shows that the so-called MPI datatype reconstruction problem by trees with the full set of MPI constructors can be solved optimally in polynomial time, refuting previous conjectures that the problem is NP-hard. Our algorithm can handle further, natural constructors, currently not found in MPI. Our algorithm is based on dynamic programming, and requires the solution of a series of shortest path problems on an incrementally built, directed, acyclic graph. The algorithm runs in $O(n^4)$ time steps and requires $O(n^2)$ space for input displacement sequences of length $n$.

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arXiv2015

Parameterized Complexity of Asynchronous Border Minimization

Microarrays are research tools used in gene discovery as well as disease and cancer diagnostics. Two prominent but challenging problems related to microarrays are the Border Minimization Problem (BMP) and the Border Minimization Problem with given placement (P-BMP). In this paper we investigate the parameterized complexity of natural variants of BMP and P-BMP under several natural parameters. We show that BMP and P-BMP are in FPT under the following two combinations of parameters: 1) the size of the alphabet (c), the maximum length of a sequence (string) in the input (l) and the number of rows of the microarray (r); and, 2) the size of the alphabet and the size of the border length (o). Furthermore, P-BMP is in FPT when parameterized by c and l. We complement our tractability results with corresponding hardness results.

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arXiv2014

Quantified Conjunctive Queries on Partially Ordered Sets

We study the computational problem of checking whether a quantified conjunctive query (a first-order sentence built using only conjunction as Boolean connective) is true in a finite poset (a reflexive, antisymmetric, and transitive directed graph). We prove that the problem is already NP-hard on a certain fixed poset, and investigate structural properties of posets yielding fixed-parameter tractability when the problem is parameterized by the query. Our main algorithmic result is that model checking quantified conjunctive queries on posets of bounded width is fixed-parameter tractable (the width of a poset is the maximum size of a subset of pairwise incomparable elements). We complement our algorithmic result by complexity results with respect to classes of finite posets in a hierarchy of natural poset invariants, establishing its tightness in this sense.

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arXiv2014

Model Checking Existential Logic on Partially Ordered Sets

We study the problem of checking whether an existential sentence (that is, a first-order sentence in prefix form built using existential quantifiers and all Boolean connectives) is true in a finite partially ordered set (in short, a poset). A poset is a reflexive, antisymmetric, and transitive digraph. The problem encompasses the fundamental embedding problem of finding an isomorphic copy of a poset as an induced substructure of another poset. Model checking existential logic is already NP-hard on a fixed poset; thus we investigate structural properties of posets yielding conditions for fixed-parameter tractability when the problem is parameterized by the sentence. We identify width as a central structural property (the width of a poset is the maximum size of a subset of pairwise incomparable elements); our main algorithmic result is that model checking existential logic on classes of finite posets of bounded width is fixed-parameter tractable. We observe a similar phenomenon in classical complexity, where we prove that the isomorphism problem is polynomial-time tractable on classes of posets of bounded width; this settles an open problem in order theory. We surround our main algorithmic result with complexity results on less restricted, natural neighboring classes of finite posets, establishing its tightness in this sense. We also relate our work with (and demonstrate its independence of) fundamental fixed-parameter tractability results for model checking on digraphs of bounded degree and bounded clique-width.

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arXiv2013

Expanding the expressive power of Monadic Second-Order logic on restricted graph classes

We combine integer linear programming and recent advances in Monadic Second-Order model checking to obtain two new algorithmic meta-theorems for graphs of bounded vertex-cover. The first shows that cardMSO1, an extension of the well-known Monadic Second-Order logic by the addition of cardinality constraints, can be solved in FPT time parameterized by vertex cover. The second meta-theorem shows that the MSO partitioning problems introduced by Rao can also be solved in FPT time with the same parameter. The significance of our contribution stems from the fact that these formalisms can describe problems which are W[1]-hard and even NP-hard on graphs of bounded tree-width. Additionally, our algorithms have only an elementary dependence on the parameter and formula. We also show that both results are easily extended from vertex cover to neighborhood diversity.

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arXiv2013

Meta-Kernelization with Structural Parameters

Meta-kernelization theorems are general results that provide polynomial kernels for large classes of parameterized problems. The known meta-kernelization theorems, in particular the results of Bodlaender et al. (FOCS'09) and of Fomin et al. (FOCS'10), apply to optimization problems parameterized by solution size. We present the first meta-kernelization theorems that use a structural parameters of the input and not the solution size. Let C be a graph class. We define the C-cover number of a graph to be a the smallest number of modules the vertex set can be partitioned into, such that each module induces a subgraph that belongs to the class C. We show that each graph problem that can be expressed in Monadic Second Order (MSO) logic has a polynomial kernel with a linear number of vertices when parameterized by the C-cover number for any fixed class C of bounded rank-width (or equivalently, of bounded clique-width, or bounded Boolean width). Many graph problems such as Independent Dominating Set, c-Coloring, and c-Domatic Number are covered by this meta-kernelization result. Our second result applies to MSO expressible optimization problems, such as Minimum Vertex Cover, Minimum Dominating Set, and Maximum Clique. We show that these problems admit a polynomial annotated kernel with a linear number of vertices.

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arXiv2012

Lower Bounds on the Complexity of MSO1 Model-Checking

One of the most important algorithmic meta-theorems is a famous result by Courcelle, which states that any graph problem definable in monadic second-order logic with edge-set quantifications (i.e., MSO2 model-checking) is decidable in linear time on any class of graphs of bounded tree-width. Recently, Kreutzer and Tazari proved a corresponding complexity lower-bound - that MSO2 model-checking is not even in XP wrt. the formula size as parameter for graph classes that are subgraph-closed and whose tree-width is poly-logarithmically unbounded. Of course, this is not an unconditional result but holds modulo a certain complexity-theoretic assumption, namely, the Exponential Time Hypothesis (ETH). In this paper we present a closely related result. We show that even MSO1 model-checking with a fixed set of vertex labels, but without edge-set quantifications, is not in XP wrt. the formula size as parameter for graph classes which are subgraph-closed and whose tree-width is poly-logarithmically unbounded unless the non-uniform ETH fails. In comparison to Kreutzer and Tazari; $(1)$ we use a stronger prerequisite, namely non-uniform instead of uniform ETH, to avoid the effectiveness assumption and the construction of certain obstructions used in their proofs; and $(2)$ we assume a different set of problems to be efficiently decidable, namely MSO1-definable properties on vertex labeled graphs instead of MSO2-definable properties on unlabeled graphs. Our result has an interesting consequence in the realm of digraph width measures: Strengthening the recent result, we show that no subdigraph-monotone measure can be "algorithmically useful", unless it is within a poly-logarithmic factor of undirected tree-width.

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arXiv2012

Using Neighborhood Diversity to Solve Hard Problems

Parameterized algorithms are a very useful tool for dealing with NP-hard problems on graphs. Yet, to properly utilize parameterized algorithms it is necessary to choose the right parameter based on the type of problem and properties of the target graph class. Tree-width is an example of a very successful graph parameter, however it cannot be used on dense graph classes and there also exist problems which are hard even on graphs of bounded tree-width. Such problems can be tackled by using vertex cover as a parameter, however this places severe restrictions on admissible graph classes. Michael Lampis has recently introduced neighborhood diversity, a new graph parameter which generalizes vertex cover to dense graphs. Among other results, he has shown that simple parameterized algorithms exist for a few problems on graphs of bounded neighborhood diversity. Our article further studies this area and provides new algorithms parameterized by neighborhood diversity for the p-Vertex-Disjoint Paths, Graph Motif and Precoloring Extension problems -- the latter two being hard even on graphs of bounded tree-width.

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arXiv2010

Better algorithms for satisfiability problems for formulas of bounded rank-width

We provide a parameterized polynomial algorithm for the propositional model counting problem #SAT, the runtime of which is single-exponential in the rank-width of a formula. Previously, analogous algorithms have been known -- e.g.~[Fischer, Makowsky, and Ravve] -- with a single-exponential dependency on the clique-width of a formula. Our algorithm thus presents an exponential runtime improvement (since clique-width reaches up to exponentially higher values than rank-width), and can be of practical interest for small values of rank-width. We also provide an algorithm for the MAX-SAT problem along the same lines.

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arXiv2010

Are there any good digraph width measures?

Several different measures for digraph width have appeared in the last few years. However, none of them shares all the "nice" properties of treewidth: First, being \emph{algorithmically useful} i.e. admitting polynomial-time algorithms for all $\MS1$-definable problems on digraphs of bounded width. And, second, having nice \emph{structural properties} i.e. being monotone under taking subdigraphs and some form of arc contractions. As for the former, (undirected) $\MS1$ seems to be the least common denominator of all reasonably expressive logical languages on digraphs that can speak about the edge/arc relation on the vertex set.The latter property is a necessary condition for a width measure to be characterizable by some version of the cops-and-robber game characterizing the ordinary treewidth. Our main result is that \emph{any reasonable} algorithmically useful and structurally nice digraph measure cannot be substantially different from the treewidth of the underlying undirected graph. Moreover, we introduce \emph{directed topological minors} and argue that they are the weakest useful notion of minors for digraphs.

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