arXiv subjects

Sébastien Zeitoun

Publications and source records attributed to Sébastien Zeitoun.

9 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Fair Division of Graphs: Beyond Traceability

In this paper, we study fair division problems in which resources are structured as graphs and agents must receive connected bundles. This connectivity requirement fundamentally alters the problem, making it significantly more challenging than its classical counterpart. We focus on the fairness notion of $\mathrm{EF1}_{\mathrm{outer}}$, where envy can be eliminated by removing at most one vertex whose deletion does not disconnect the bundle -- a critical constraint for applications such as land division and network allocation. Our first result extends prior work by establishing the existence of $\mathrm{EF1}_{\mathrm{outer}}$ allocations for an infinite family of non-traceable graphs (that is, graphs that do not admit a Hamiltonian path), answering a central open question and generalizing Bilò et al.'s result for traceable graphs. We then make progress on a conjecture concerning the $\mathrm{EF1}_{\mathrm{outer}}$ spectrum of trees due to Chen and Zwicker. Finally, we complement our structural results with algorithmic insights, showing that deciding the existence of an $\mathrm{EF1}_{\mathrm{outer}}$ allocation is NP-complete even for binary additive valuations, thereby resolving an open complexity question. Taken together, our results deepen the connection between graph theory and fair division, and offer new tools for studying fairness in structured resource environments.

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arXiv2026

The local complexity of certifying parity

In this paper, we consider the problem of locally certifying that the size of a network is even, or more generally, congruent to some fixed number. The parity property is one of the simplest global properties, and it plays an intriguing role in local certification. On the one hand, it is one of the simplest properties in cycles because it is equivalent to 2-colorability, and hence can be certified with a single bit. On the other hand, in general graphs, no non-trivial lower bound on the size of the certificates is known, and the known upper bound basically consists in certifying the \emph{exact} value of $n$. In addition, the nature of the problem makes all the known lower bound approaches fail. We uncover a surprising landscape for parity across different models and graph structures: * In general graphs equipped with identifiers, when allowing verification radius 2, parity can be certified with a constant number of bits. * But in the model of anonymous graphs and allowing verification radius only 1, parity requires $Ω(\log \log^*n)$ bits. * Finally, in bounded expansion graph classes (such as bounded-degree graphs and planar graphs), the lower bound does not apply: in the same restricted model we can design a constant-size certification. We introduce several new tools that we expect to be useful in other contexts, in particular ways to \emph{encode a parent at each node with a constant number of bits} (via implicit use of the IDs and conflict-free colorings) and a new lower bound technique, with complex topologies and higher-order Ramsey-type arguments.

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arXiv2025

Renaming in distributed certification

Local certification is the area of distributed network computing asking the following question: How to certify to the nodes of a network that a global property holds, if they are limited to a local verification? In this area, it is often essential to have identifiers, that is, unique integers assigned to the nodes. In this short paper, we show how to reduce the range of the identifiers, in three different settings. More precisely, we show how to rename identifiers in the classical local certification setting, when we can (resp.\ cannot) choose the new identifiers, and we show how a global certificate can help to encode very compactly a new identifier assignment that is not injective in general, but still useful in applications. We conclude with a number of applications of these results: For every $\ell$, there are local certification schemes for the properties of having clique number at most $\ell$, having diameter at most $\ell$, and having independence number at most~2, with certificates of size $O(n)$. We also show that there is a global certification scheme for bipartiteness with a certificate of size $O(n)$. All these results are optimal.

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arXiv2025

Reductions in local certification

Local certification is a topic originating from distributed computing, where a prover tries to convince the vertices of a graph $G$ that $G$ satisfies some property $\mathcal{P}$. To convince the vertices, the prover gives a small piece of information, called certificate, to each vertex, and the vertices then decide whether the property $\mathcal{P}$ is satisfied by just looking at their certificate and the certificates of their neighbors. When studying a property $\mathcal{P}$ in the perspective of local certification, the aim is to find the optimal size of the certificates needed to certify $\mathcal{P}$, which can be viewed a measure of the local complexity of $\mathcal{P}$. A certification scheme is considered to be efficient if the size of the certificates is polylogarithmic in the number of vertices. While there have been a number of meta-theorems providing efficient certification schemes for general graph classes, the proofs of the lower bounds on the size of the certificates are usually very problem-dependent. In this work, we introduce a notion of hardness reduction in local certification, and show that we can transfer a lower bound on the certificates for a property $\mathcal{P}$ to a lower bound for another property $\mathcal{P}'$, via a (local) hardness reduction from $\mathcal{P}$ to $\mathcal{P}'$. We then give a number of applications in which we obtain polynomial lower bounds for many classical properties using such reductions.

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arXiv2025

Complexity landscape for local certification

An impressive recent line of work has charted the complexity landscape of distributed graph algorithms. For many settings, it has been determined which time complexities exist, and which do not (in the sense that no local problem could have an optimal algorithm with that complexity). In this paper, we initiate the study of the landscape for space complexity of distributed graph algorithms. More precisely, we focus on the local certification setting, where a prover assigns certificates to nodes to certify a property, and where the space complexity is measured by the size of the certificates. Already for anonymous paths and cycles, we unveil a surprising landscape: - There is a gap between complexity $O(1)$ and $Θ(\log \log n)$ in paths. This is the first gap established in local certification. - There exists a property that has complexity $Θ(\log \log n)$ in paths, a regime that was not known to exist for a natural property. - There is a gap between complexity $O(1)$ and $Θ(\log n)$ in cycles, hence a gap that is exponentially larger than for paths. We then generalize our result for paths to the class of trees. Namely, we show that there is a gap between complexity $O(1)$ and $Θ(\log \log d)$ in trees, where $d$ is the diameter. We finally describe some settings where there are no gaps at all. To prove our results we develop a new toolkit, based on various results of automata theory and arithmetic, which is of independent interest.

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arXiv2025

A subquadratic certification scheme for P5-free graphs

In local certification, vertices of a $n$-vertex graph perform a local verification to check if a given property is satisfied by the graph. This verification is performed thanks to certificates, which are pieces of information that are given to the vertices. In this work, we focus on the local certification of $P_5$-freeness, and we prove a $O(n^{3/2})$ upper bound on the size of the certificates, which is (to our knowledge) the first subquadratic upper bound for this property.

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arXiv2024

Local certification of forbidden subgraphs

Detecting specific structures in a network has been a very active theme of research in distributed computing for at least a decade. In this paper, we start the study of subgraph detection from the perspective of local certification. Remember that a local certification is a distributed mechanism enabling the nodes of a network to check the correctness of the current configuration, thanks to small pieces of information called certificates. Our main question is: For a given graph $H$, what is the minimum certificate size that allows checking that the network does not contain $H$ as a (possibly induced) subgraph? We show a variety of lower and upper bounds, uncovering an interesting interplay between the optimal certificate size, the size of the forbidden subgraph, and the locality of the verification. Along the way we introduce several new technical tools, in particular what we call the \emph{layered map}, which is not specific to forbidden subgraphs and that we expect to be useful for certifying many other properties.

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arXiv2024

Global certification via perfect hashing

In this work, we provide an upper bound for global certification of graph homomorphism, a generalization of graph coloring. In certification, the nodes of a network should decide if the network satisfies a given property, thanks to small pieces of information called certificates. Here, there is only one global certificate which is shared by all the nodes, and the property we want to certify is the existence of a graph homomorphism to a given graph. For bipartiteness, a special case of graph homomorphism, Feuilloley and Hirvonen proved in~\cite{FeuilloleyH18} some upper and lower bounds on the size of the optimal certificate, and made the conjecture that their lower bound could be improved to match their upper bound. We prove that this conjecture is false: their lower bound was in fact optimal, and we prove it by providing the matching upper bound using a known result of perfect hashing.

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arXiv2023

Local certification of local properties: tight bounds, trade-offs and new parameters

Local certification is a distributed mechanism enabling the nodes of a network to check the correctness of the current configuration, thanks to small pieces of information called certificates. For many classic global properties, like checking the acyclicity of the network, the optimal size of the certificates depends on the size of the network, $n$. In this paper, we focus on properties for which the size of the certificates does not depend on $n$ but on other parameters. We focus on three such important properties and prove tight bounds for all of them. Namely, we prove that the optimal certification size is: $Θ(\log k)$ for $k$-colorability (and even exactly $\lceil \log k \rceil$ bits in the anonymous model while previous works had only proved a $2$-bit lower bound); $(1/2)\log t+o(\log t)$ for dominating sets at distance $t$ (an unexpected and tighter-than-usual bound) ; and $Θ(\log Δ)$ for perfect matching in graphs of maximum degree $Δ$ (the first non-trivial bound parameterized by $Δ$). We also prove some surprising upper bounds, for example, certifying the existence of a perfect matching in a planar graph can be done with only two bits. In addition, we explore various specific cases for these properties, in particular improving our understanding of the trade-off between locality of the verification and certificate size.

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