arXiv subjects

Saeed Odak

Publications and source records attributed to Saeed Odak.

13 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

On 2-Layer k-Matching-Planar Graphs

A graph is $k$-matching-planar if it admits a drawing in the plane such that, for every edge $e$, the edges crossing $e$ contain no matching of size greater than $k$. The class of $k$-matching-planar graphs generalizes other beyond-planar graph classes, such as $k$-planar and fan-planar graphs. In a $2$-layer drawing of a bipartite graph, the vertices of the two bipartition classes are placed on two parallel horizontal lines and edges are drawn as straight-line segments between them. We prove that every graph with a $2$-layer $k$-matching-planar drawing has pathwidth at most $2k+1$. Moreover, for every $k \geq 0$, we construct a graph with a $2$-layer $k$-matching-planar drawing whose pathwidth is $3\lfloor k/2\rfloor + 1$. On the algorithmic side, we consider the one-sided recognition problem where a fixed embedding of the vertices on one side is given. We show that this problem is NP-hard. On the other hand, we prove that the problem is fixed-parameter tractable with respect to $k$. Finally, we prove that the two-sided variant cannot be approximated within any constant factor in polynomial time unless $\operatorname{P}=\operatorname{NP}$.

cs.CG↗

arXiv2026

Shifting is Optimal under Gap-ETH: A Lower Bound Framework for Geometric Approximation Schemes

The shifting technique of Hochbaum and Maass [J.ACM'85] produces PTASes with the fastest known running times $n^{O(1/\varepsilon^{d-1})}$ for several $d$-dimensional geometric problems. However, it is only known, due to Marx [FOCS'07], that these algorithms are indeed optimal for dimension $d=2$. We show that these running times are optimal under Gap-ETH for every constant dimension. More precisely, we develop a framework that enables us to prove the conditional optimality of the shifting algorithms for several problems on unit ball graphs, such as maximum independent set, maximum induced forest, and others, as well as for the problem of piercing unit balls. Our framework is built using the cube wiring theorem of De Berg et al. [SICOMP'20] and the reduction steps of Marx and Sidiropoulos [SoCG'14] to create a convenient maximization version of geometric CSP that can be used as a basis for reductions.

cs.CG↗

arXiv2026

Gap-ETH-Tight Algorithms for Hyperbolic TSP and Steiner Tree

We give an approximation scheme for the TSP in $d$-dimensional hyperbolic space that has optimal dependence on $\varepsilon$ under Gap-ETH. For any fixed dimension $d\geq 2$ and for any $\varepsilon>0$ our randomized algorithm gives a $(1+\varepsilon)$-approximation in time $2^{O(1/\varepsilon^{d-1})}n^{1+o(1)}$. We also provide an algorithm for the hyperbolic Steiner tree problem with the same running time. Our algorithm is an Arora-style dynamic program based on a randomly shifted hierarchical decomposition. However, we introduce a new hierarchical decomposition called the hybrid hyperbolic quadtree to achieve the desired large-scale structure, which deviates significantly from the recently proposed hyperbolic quadtree of Kisfaludi-Bak and Van Wordragen (JoCG'25). Moreover, we have a new non-uniform portal placement, and our structure theorem employs a new weighted crossing analysis. We believe that these techniques could form the basis for further developments in geometric optimization in curved spaces.

cs.CG↗

arXiv2025

Noncrossing Longest Paths and Cycles

Edge crossings in geometric graphs are sometimes undesirable as they could lead to unwanted situations such as collisions in motion planning and inconsistency in VLSI layout. Short geometric structures such as shortest perfect matchings, shortest spanning trees, shortest spanning paths, and shortest spanning cycles on a given point set are inherently noncrossing. However, the longest such structures need not be noncrossing. In fact, it is intuitive to expect many edge crossings in various geometric graphs that are longest. Recently, Álvarez-Rebollar, Cravioto-Lagos, Marín, Solé-Pi, and Urrutia (Graphs and Combinatorics, 2024) constructed a set of points for which the longest perfect matching is noncrossing. They raised several challenging questions in this direction. In particular, they asked whether the longest spanning path, on any finite set of points in the plane, must have a pair of crossing edges. They also conjectured that the longest spanning cycle must have a pair of crossing edges. In this paper, we give a negative answer to the question and also refute the conjecture. We present a framework for constructing arbitrarily large point sets for which the longest perfect matchings, the longest spanning paths, and the longest spanning cycles are noncrossing.

cs.CG↗

arXiv2025

On Separating Path and Tree Systems in Graphs

We explore the concept of separating systems of vertex sets of graphs. A separating system of a set $X$ is a collection of subsets of $X$ such that for any pair of distinct elements in $X$, there exists a set in the separating system that contains exactly one of the two elements. A separating system of the vertex set of a graph $G$ is called a vertex-separating path (tree) system of $G$ if the elements of the separating system are paths (trees) in the graph $G$. In this paper, we focus on the size of the smallest vertex-separating path (tree) system for different types of graphs, including trees, grids, and maximal outerplanar graphs.

cs.DM↗

arXiv2025

Contiguous Boundary Guarding

We study the problem of guarding the boundary of a simple polygon with a minimum number of guards such that each guard covers a contiguous portion of the boundary. First, we present a simple greedy algorithm for this problem that returns a guard set of size at most OPT + 1, where OPT is the number of guards in an optimal solution. Then, we present a polynomial-time exact algorithm. While the algorithm is not complicated, its correctness proof is rather involved. This result is interesting in the sense that guarding problems are typically NP-hard and, in particular, it is NP-hard to minimize the number of guards to see the boundary of a simple polygon, without the contiguous boundary guarding constraint. From the combinatorial point of view, we show that any $n$-vertex polygon can be guarded by at most $\lfloor \frac{n-2}{2}\rfloor$ guards. This bound is tight because there are polygons that require this many guards.

cs.CG↗

arXiv2025

Deciding if a DAG is Interesting is Hard

The \emph{interestingness score} of a directed path $Π= e_1, e_2, e_3, \dots, e_\ell$ in an edge-weighted directed graph $G$ is defined as $\texttt{score}(Π) := \sum_{i=1}^\ell w(e_i) \cdot \log{(i+1)}$, where $w(e_i)$ is the weight of the edge $e_i$. We consider two optimization problems that arise in the analysis of Mapper graphs, which is a powerful tool in topological data analysis. In the IP problem, the objective is to find a collection $\mathcal{P}$ of edge-disjoint paths in $G$ with the maximum total interestingness score. %; that is, two raised to the power of the sum of the weights of the paths in $\mathcal{P}$. For $k \in \mathbb{N}$, the $k$-IP problem is a variant of the IP problem with the extra constraint that each path in $\mathcal{P}$ must have exactly $k$ edges. Kalyanaraman, Kamruzzaman, and Krishnamoorthy (Journal of Computational Geometry, 2019) claim that both IP and $k$-IP (for $k \geq 3$) are NP-complete. We point out some inaccuracies in their proofs. Furthermore, we show that both problems are NP-hard in directed acyclic graphs.

cs.CC↗

arXiv2025

Closest Pair Queries in Vertical Slabs and Tight Bounds on the Number of Possible Answers

Let $S$ be a set of $n$ points in $\mathbb{R}^d$, where $d \geq 2$ is a constant, and let $H_1,H_2,\ldots,H_{m+1}$ be a sequence of vertical hyperplanes that are sorted by their first coordinates, such that exactly $n/m$ points of $S$ are between any two successive hyperplanes. Let $A(S,m)$ be the set of different closest pairs in the ${{m+1} \choose 2}$ vertical slabs that are bounded by $H_i$ and $H_j$, over all $1 \leq i < j \leq m+1$. We prove tight bounds for the largest possible size of $A(S,m)$, over all point sets of size $n$, and for all values of $1 \leq m \leq n$. As a result of these bounds, we obtain, for any constant $\epsilon>0$, a data structure of size $O(n)$, such that for any vertical query slab $Q$, the closest pair in the set $Q \cap S$ can be reported in $O(n^{1/2+\epsilon})$ time. Prior to this work, no linear space data structure with sublinear query time was known.

cs.CG↗

arXiv2024

Computing Oriented Spanners and their Dilation

Given a point set $P$ in a metric space and a real number $t \geq 1$, an \emph{oriented $t$-spanner} is an oriented graph $\overrightarrow{G}=(P,\overrightarrow{E})$, where for every pair of distinct points $p$ and $q$ in $P$, the shortest oriented closed walk in $\overrightarrow{G}$ that contains $p$ and $q$ is at most a factor $t$ longer than the perimeter of the smallest triangle in $P$ containing $p$ and $q$. The \emph{oriented dilation} of a graph $\overrightarrow{G}$ is the minimum $t$ for which $\overrightarrow{G}$ is an oriented $t$-spanner. We present the first algorithm that computes, in Euclidean space, a sparse oriented spanner whose oriented dilation is bounded by a constant. More specifically, for any set of $n$ points in $\mathbb{R}^d$, where $d$ is a constant, we construct an oriented $(2+\varepsilon)$-spanner with $\mathcal{O}(n)$ edges in $\mathcal{O}(n \log n)$ time and $\mathcal{O}(n)$ space. Our construction uses the well-separated pair decomposition and an algorithm that computes a $(1+\varepsilon)$-approximation of the minimum-perimeter triangle in $P$ containing two given query points in $\mathcal{O}(\log n)$ time. While our algorithm is based on first computing a suitable undirected graph and then orienting it, we show that, in general, computing the orientation of an undirected graph that minimises its oriented dilation is NP-hard, even for point sets in the Euclidean plane. We further prove that even if the orientation is already given, computing the oriented dilation is APSP-hard for points in a general metric space. We complement this result with an algorithm that approximates the oriented dilation of a given graph in subcubic time for point sets in $\mathbb{R}^d$, where $d$ is a constant.

cs.CG↗

arXiv2024

On $k$-planar Graphs without Short Cycles

We study the impact of forbidding short cycles to the edge density of $k$-planar graphs; a $k$-planar graph is one that can be drawn in the plane with at most $k$ crossings per edge. Specifically, we consider three settings, according to which the forbidden substructures are $3$-cycles, $4$-cycles or both of them (i.e., girth $\ge 5$). For all three settings and all $k\in\{1,2,3\}$, we present lower and upper bounds on the maximum number of edges in any $k$-planar graph on $n$ vertices. Our bounds are of the form $c\,n$, for some explicit constant $c$ that depends on $k$ and on the setting. For general $k \geq 4$ our bounds are of the form $c\sqrt{k}n$, for some explicit constant $c$. These results are obtained by leveraging different techniques, such as the discharging method, the recently introduced density formula for non-planar graphs, and new upper bounds for the crossing number of $2$-- and $3$-planar graphs in combination with corresponding lower bounds based on the Crossing Lemma.

math.CO↗

arXiv2024

Connected Dominating Sets in Triangulations

We show that every $n$-vertex triangulation has a connected dominating set of size at most $10n/21$. Equivalently, every $n$ vertex triangulation has a spanning tree with at least $11n/21$ leaves. Prior to the current work, the best known bounds were $n/2$, which follows from work of Albertson, Berman, Hutchinson, and Thomassen (J. Graph Theory \textbf{14}(2):247--258). One immediate consequence of this result is an improved bound for the SEFENOMAP graph drawing problem of Angelini, Evans, Frati, and Gudmundsson (J. Graph Theory \textbf{82}(1):45--64). As a second application, we show that for every set $P$ of $\lceil 11n/21\rceil$ points in $\R^2$ every $n$-vertex planar graph has a one-bend non-crossing drawing in which some set of $11n/21$ vertices is drawn on the points of $P$. The main result extends to $n$-vertex triangulations of genus-$g$ surfaces, and implies that these have connected dominating sets of size at most $10n/21+O(\sqrt{gn})$.

math.CO↗

arXiv2022

Odd Colourings of Graph Products

The odd colouring number is a new graph parameter introduced by Petruševski and Škrekovski. In this note, we show that graphs with so called product structure have bounded odd-colouring number. By known results on the product structure of $k$-planar graphs, this implies that $k$-planar graphs have bounded odd-colouring number, which answers a question of Cranston, Lafferty, and Song.

math.CO↗

arXiv2022

A Linear-Time Algorithm for Product Structure in Planar Graphs

The \emph{Product Structure Theorem} for planar graphs (Dujmovi\'c et al.\ \emph{JACM}, \textbf{67}(4):22) states that any planar graph is contained in the strong product of a planar $3$-tree, a path, and a $3$-cycle. We give a simple linear-time algorithm for finding this partition as well as several related partitions. This improves on the previous $O(n\log n)$ time algorithm for finding this partition (Morin.\ \emph{Algorithmica}, \textbf{85}(5):1544--1558). The algorithm is practical; we provide open-source C and C++ implementations that, even on modest hardware, can process graphs with millions of vertices in a matter of seconds.

cs.DS↗