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Shivesh K. Roy

Publications and source records attributed to Shivesh K. Roy.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

Hardness of Vertex Splitting: Cographs, Chordal Graphs, and Beyond

Vertex splitting replaces a vertex (v) by two nonadjacent vertices whose neighborhoods together equal (N(v)). A split is \emph{exclusive} if these neighborhoods are disjoint and \emph{shallow} if no newly created vertex is split again. For a graph property (Π), \textsc{(Π)-Vertex Splitting} asks whether at most (k) splits can transform a graph (G) into one satisfying (Π). We continue the systematic study of this operation and settle several open problems. First, we prove that \textsc{Cograph Vertex Splitting} is \textsf{NP}-complete, even on graphs of girth at least 5, resolving a question of Firbas and Sorge (ISAAC 2024). More generally, \textsc{(P_t)-free Vertex Splitting} is \textsf{NP}-complete for every fixed (t\geq 4). We also prove that \textsc{Chordal Vertex Splitting} and \textsc{Unit-Interval Vertex Splitting} are \textsf{NP}-complete, resolving two questions of Abu-Khzam, Chakraborty, Isenmann, and Oijid (IWOCA 2026). Our hardness results extend to the exclusive and shallow variants. Assuming the Exponential Time Hypothesis, none of these problems admits an algorithm running in (2^{o(k)}n^{O(1)}) time; moreover, except for the unit-interval cases, none admits an algorithm running in (2^{o(n)}) time.

cs.DS

On the Parameterized Complexity of Multiway Near-Separator

We study a new graph separation problem called Multiway Near-Separator. Given an undirected graph $G$, integer $k$, and terminal set $T \subseteq V(G)$, it asks whether there is a vertex set $S \subseteq V(G) \setminus T$ of size at most $k$ such that in graph $G-S$, no pair of distinct terminals can be connected by two pairwise internally vertex-disjoint paths. Hence each terminal pair can be separated in $G-S$ by removing at most one vertex. The problem is therefore a generalization of (Node) Multiway Cut, which asks for a vertex set for which each terminal is in a different component of $G-S$. We develop a fixed-parameter tractable algorithm for Multiway Near-Separator running in time $2^{O(k \log k)} * n^{O(1)}$. Our algorithm is based on a new pushing lemma for solutions with respect to important separators, along with two problem-specific ingredients. The first is a polynomial-time subroutine to reduce the number of terminals in the instance to a polynomial in the solution size $k$ plus the size of a given suboptimal solution. The second is a polynomial-time algorithm that, given a graph $G$ and terminal set $T \subseteq V(G)$ along with a single vertex $x \in V(G)$ that forms a multiway near-separator, computes a 14-approximation for the problem of finding a multiway near-separator not containing $x$.

cs.DS

On the Hardness of Compressing Weights

We investigate computational problems involving large weights through the lens of kernelization, which is a framework of polynomial-time preprocessing aimed at compressing the instance size. Our main focus is the weighted Clique problem, where we are given an edge-weighted graph and the goal is to detect a clique of total weight equal to a prescribed value. We show that the weighted variant, parameterized by the number of vertices $n$, is significantly harder than the unweighted problem by presenting an $O(n^{3 - \varepsilon})$ lower bound on the size of the kernel, under the assumption that NP $\not \subseteq$ coNP/poly. This lower bound is essentially tight: we show that we can reduce the problem to the case with weights bounded by $2^{O(n)}$, which yields a randomized kernel of $O(n^3)$ bits. We generalize these results to the weighted $d$-Uniform Hyperclique problem, Subset Sum, and weighted variants of Boolean Constraint Satisfaction Problems (CSPs). We also study weighted minimization problems and show that weight compression is easier when we only want to preserve the collection of optimal solutions. Namely, we show that for node-weighted Vertex Cover on bipartite graphs it is possible to maintain the set of optimal solutions using integer weights from the range $[1, n]$, but if we want to maintain the ordering of the weights of all inclusion-minimal solutions, then weights as large as $2^{Ω(n)}$ are necessary.

cs.DS