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Let XNLP be the class of parameterized problems such that an instance of size n with parameter k can be solved nondeterministically in time f(k)nO(1) and space f(k)log⁡(n) (for some computable function f). We give a wide variety of XNLP-complete problems, such as LIST COLORING and PRECOLORING EXTENSION with pathwidth as parameter, SCHEDULING OF JOBS WITH PRECEDENCE CONSTRAINTS, with both number of machines and partial order width as parameter, BANDWIDTH and variants of WEIGHTED CNF-SATISFIABILITY. In particular, this implies that all these problems are W[t]-hard for all t.

Courcelle’s celebrated theorem states that all MSO-expressible properties can be decided in linear time on graphs of bounded treewidth. Unfortunately, the hidden constant implied by this theorem is a tower of exponentials whose height increases with each quantifier alternation in the formula. More devastatingly, this cannot be improved, under standard assumptions, even if we consider the much more restricted problem of deciding FO-expressible properties on trees. In this paper we revisit this well-studied topic and identify a natural special case where the dependence of Courcelle’s theorem can, in fact, be improved. Specifically, we show that all FO-expressible properties can be decided with an elementary dependence on the input formula, if the input graph has bounded pathwidth (rather than treewidth). This is a rare example of treewidth and pathwidth having different complexity behaviors. Our result is also in sharp contrast with MSO logic on graphs of bounded pathwidth, where it is known that the dependence has to be non-elementary, under standard assumptions. Our work builds upon, and generalizes, a corresponding meta-theorem by Gajarský and Hliněný for the more restricted class of graphs of bounded tree-depth.

Motivated by the algorithmic study of 3-dimensional manifolds, we explore the structural relationship between the JSJ decomposition of a given 3-manifold and its triangulations. Building on work of Bachman, Derby-Talbot and Sedgwick, we show that a "sufficiently complicated" JSJ decomposition of a 3-manifold enforces a "complicated structure" for all of its triangulations. More concretely, we show that, under certain conditions, the treewidth (resp. pathwidth) of the graph that captures the incidences between the pieces of the JSJ decomposition of an irreducible, closed, orientable 3-manifold M yields a linear lower bound on its treewidth tw (M) (resp. pathwidth pw(M)), defined as the smallest treewidth (resp. pathwidth) of the dual graph of any triangulation of M. We present several applications of this result. We give the first example of an infinite family of bounded-treewidth 3-manifolds with unbounded pathwidth. We construct Haken 3-manifolds with arbitrarily large treewidth - previously the existence of such 3-manifolds was only known in the non-Haken case. We also show that the problem of providing a constant-factor approximation for the treewidth (resp. pathwidth) of bounded-degree graphs efficiently reduces to computing a constant-factor approximation for the treewidth (resp. pathwidth) of 3-manifolds.

In this paper, we showcase the class XNLP as a natural place for many hard problems parameterized by linear width measures. This strengthens existing W[1]-hardness proofs for these problems, since XNLP-hardness implies W[t]-hardness for all t. It also indicates, via a conjecture by Pilipczuk and Wrochna [ToCT 2018], that any XP algorithm for such problems is likely to require XP space. In particular, we show XNLP-completeness for natural problems parameterized by pathwidth, linear clique-width, and linear mim-width. The problems we consider are Independent Set, Dominating Set, Odd Cycle Transversal, (q-)Coloring, Max Cut, Maximum Regular Induced Subgraph, Feedback Vertex Set, Capacitated (Red-Blue) Dominating Set, and Bipartite Bandwidth.

In this paper, we showcase the class XNLP as a natural place for many hard problems parameterized by linear width measures. This strengthens existing W[1]-hardness proofs for these problems, since XNLP-hardness implies W[t]-hardness for all t. It also indicates, via a conjecture by Pilipczuk and Wrochna [ToCT 2018], that any XP algorithm for such problems is likely to require XP space. In particular, we show XNLP-completeness for natural problems parameterized by pathwidth, linear clique-width, and linear mim-width. The problems we consider are Independent Set, Dominating Set, Odd Cycle Transversal, (q-)Coloring, Max Cut, Maximum Regular Induced Subgraph, Feedback Vertex Set, Capacitated (Red-Blue) Dominating Set, and Bipartite Bandwidth.

In this paper we consider the parameterized complexity of two versions of a parallel machine scheduling problem with precedence delays, unit processing times and time windows. In the first version - with exact delays - we assume that the delay between two jobs must be exactly respected, whereas in the second version - with minimum delays - the delay between two jobs is a lower bound on the time between them. Two parameters are considered for this analysis: the pathwidth of the interval graph induced by the time windows and the maximum precedence delay value. We prove that our problems are para-NP-complete with respect to any of the two parameters and fixed-parameter tractable parameterized by the pair of parameters.

Lovász (1967) showed that two graphs G and H are isomorphic if and only if they are homomorphism indistinguishable over the class of all graphs, i.e. for every graph F, the number of homomorphisms from F to G equals the number of homomorphisms from F to H. Recently, homomorphism indistinguishability over restricted classes of graphs such as bounded treewidth, bounded treedepth and planar graphs, has emerged as a surprisingly powerful framework for capturing diverse equivalence relations on graphs arising from logical equivalence and algebraic equation systems. In this paper, we provide a unified algebraic framework for such results by examining the linear-algebraic and representation-theoretic structure of tensors counting homomorphisms from labelled graphs. The existence of certain linear transformations between such homomorphism tensor subspaces can be interpreted both as homomorphism indistinguishability over a graph class and as feasibility of an equational system. Following this framework, we obtain characterisations of homomorphism indistinguishability over several natural graph classes, namely trees of bounded degree, graphs of bounded pathwidth (answering a question of Dell et al. (2018)), and graphs of bounded treedepth.

We study homomorphism polynomials, which are polynomials that enumerate all homomorphisms from a pattern graph H to n-vertex graphs. These polynomials have received a lot of attention recently for their crucial role in several new algorithms for counting and detecting graph patterns, and also for obtaining natural polynomial families which are complete for algebraic complexity classes VBP, VP, and VNP. We discover that, in the monotone setting, the formula complexity, the ABP complexity, and the circuit complexity of such polynomial families are exactly characterized by the treedepth, the pathwidth, and the treewidth of the pattern graph respectively. Furthermore, we establish a single, unified framework, using our characterization, to collect several known results that were obtained independently via different methods. For instance, we attain superpolynomial separations between circuits, ABPs, and formulas in the monotone setting, where the polynomial families separating the classes all correspond to well-studied combinatorial problems. Moreover, our proofs rediscover fine-grained separations between these models for constant-degree polynomials.

The graph parameter of pathwidth can be seen as a measure of the topological resemblance of a graph to a path. A popular definition of pathwidth is given in terms of node search where we are given a system of tunnels (represented by a graph) that is contaminated by some infectious substance and we are looking for a search strategy that, at each step, either places a searcher on a vertex or removes a searcher from a vertex and where an edge is cleaned when both endpoints are simultaneously occupied by searchers. It was proved that the minimum number of searchers required for a successful cleaning strategy is equal to the pathwidth of the graph plus one. Two desired characteristics for a cleaning strategy is to be monotone (no recontamination occurs) and connected (clean territories always remain connected). Under these two demands, the number of searchers is equivalent to a variant of pathwidth called connected pathwidth. We prove that connected pathwidth is fixed parameter tractable, in particular we design a 2^O(k²)⋅n time algorithm that checks whether the connected pathwidth of G is at most k. This resolves an open question by [Dereniowski, Osula, and Rzążewski, Finding small-width connected path-decompositions in polynomial time. Theor. Comput. Sci., 794:85–100, 2019]. For our algorithm, we enrich the typical sequence technique that is able to deal with the connectivity demand. Typical sequences have been introduced in [Bodlaender and Kloks. Efficient and constructive algorithms for the pathwidth and treewidth of graphs. J. Algorithms, 21(2):358–402, 1996] for the design of linear parameterized algorithms for treewidth and pathwidth. While this technique has been later applied to other parameters, none of its advancements was able to deal with the connectivity demand, as it is a "global" demand that concerns an unbounded number of parts of the graph of unbounded size. The proposed extension is based on an encoding of the connectivity property that is quite versat

Structural graph parameters, such as treewidth, pathwidth, and clique-width, are a central topic of study in parameterized complexity. A main aim of research in this area is to understand the "price of generality" of these widths: as we transition from more restrictive to more general notions, which are the problems that see their complexity status deteriorate from fixed-parameter tractable to intractable? This type of question is by now very well-studied, but, somewhat strikingly, the algorithmic frontier between the two (arguably) most central width notions, treewidth and pathwidth, is still not understood: currently, no natural graph problem is known to be W-hard for one but FPT for the other. Indeed, a surprising development of the last few years has been the observation that for many of the most paradigmatic problems, their complexities for the two parameters actually coincide exactly, despite the fact that treewidth is a much more general parameter. It would thus appear that the extra generality of treewidth over pathwidth often comes "for free". Our main contribution in this paper is to uncover the first natural example where this generality comes with a high price. We consider Grundy Coloring, a variation of coloring where one seeks to calculate the worst possible coloring that could be assigned to a graph by a greedy First-Fit algorithm. We show that this well-studied problem is FPT parameterized by pathwidth; however, it becomes significantly harder (W[1]-hard) when parameterized by treewidth. Furthermore, we show that Grundy Coloring makes a second complexity jump for more general widths, as it becomes para-NP-hard for clique-width. Hence, Grundy Coloring nicely captures the complexity trade-offs between the three most well-studied parameters. Completing the picture, we show that Grundy Coloring is FPT parameterized by modular-width.

We prove that a minor-closed class of graphs has bounded layered pathwidth if and only if some apex-forest is not in the class. This generalizes a theorem of Robertson and Seymour, which says that a minor-closed class of graphs has bounded pathwidth if and only if some forest is not in the class., SCOPUS: ar.j, info:eu-repo/semantics/published

We show that the TEMPORAL GRAPH EXPLORATION PROBLEM is NP-complete, even when the underlying graph has pathwidth 2 and at each time step, the current graph is connected.

We show that the TEMPORAL GRAPH EXPLORATION PROBLEM is NP-complete, even when the underlying graph has pathwidth 2 and at each time step, the current graph is connected. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The maximum modularity of a graph is a parameter widely used to describe the level of clustering or community structure in a network. Determining the maximum modularity of a graph is known to be NP-complete in general, and in practice a range of heuristics are used to construct partitions of the vertex-set which give lower bounds on the maximum modularity but without any guarantee on how close these bounds are to the true maximum. In this paper we investigate the parameterised complexity of determining the maximum modularity with respect to various standard structural parameterisations of the input graph G. We show that the problem belongs to FPT when parameterised by the size of a minimum vertex cover for G, and is solvable in polynomial time whenever the treewidth or max leaf number of G is bounded by some fixed constant; we also obtain an FPT algorithm, parameterised by treewidth, to compute any constant-factor approximation to the maximum modularity. On the other hand we show that the problem is W[1]-hard (and hence unlikely to admit an FPT algorithm) when parameterised simultaneously by pathwidth and the size of a minimum feedback vertex set.

We show that the Temporal Graph Exploration Problem is NP-complete, even when the underlying graph has pathwidth 2 and at each time step, the current graph is connected.

Graph minors are a primary tool in understanding the structure of undirected graphs, with many conceptual and algorithmic implications. We propose new variants of directed graph minors and directed graph embeddings, by modifying familiar definitions. For the class of 2-terminal directed acyclic graphs (TDAGs) our two definitions coincide, and the class is closed under both operations. The usefulness of our directed minor operations is demonstrated by characterizing all TDAGs with serial-parallel width at most k; a class of networks known to guarantee bounded negative externality in nonatomic routing games. Our characterization implies that a TDAG has serial-parallel width of 1 if and only if it is a directed series-parallel graph. We also study the computational complexity of finding a directed minor and computing the serial-parallel width.

We apply the concept of formula treewidth and pathwidth to computation tree logic, linear temporal logic, and the full branching time logic. Several representations of formulas as graphlike structures are discussed, and corresponding notions of treewidth and pathwidth are introduced. As an application for such structures, we present a classification in terms of parametrised complexity of the satisfiability problem, where we make use of Courcelle's famous theorem for recognition of certain classes of structures. Our classification shows a dichotomy between W[1]-hard and fixed-parameter tractable operator fragments almost independently of the chosen graph representation. The only fragments that are proven to be fixed-parameter tractable (FPT) are those that are restricted to the X operator. By investigating Boolean operator fragments in the sense of Post's lattice, we achieve the same complexity as in the unrestricted case if the set of available Boolean functions can express the function "negation of the implication." Conversely, we show containment in FPT for almost all other clones. © ACM 2017. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive Version of Record was published in ACM Transactions on Computational Logic 18 (2017), Nr. 1, 1. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3001835.

We give asymptotically exact values for the treewidth tw(G) of a random geometric graph G ¿ G(n, r) in [0, v n] 2 . More precisely, let rc denote the threshold radius for the appearance of the giant component in G(n, r). We then show that for any constant 0 < r < rc, tw(G) = T( log n log log n ), and for c being sufficiently large, and r = r(n) = c, tw(G) = T(r v n). Our proofs show that for the corresponding values of r the same asymptotic bounds also hold for the pathwidth and the treedepth of a random geometric graph., Postprint (author's final draft)

In this paper, we consider the notion of special treewidth, recently introduced by Courcelle (2012). In a special tree decomposition, for each vertex v in a given graph, the bags containing v form a rooted path. We show that the class of graphs of special treewidth at most two is closed under taking minors, and give the complete list of the six minor obstructions. As an intermediate result, we prove that every connected graph of special treewidth at most two can be constructed by arranging blocks of special treewidth at most two in a specific tree-like fashion.Inspired by the notion of special treewidth, we introduce three natural variants of treewidth, namely spaghetti treewidth, strongly chordal treewidth and directed spaghetti treewidth. All these parameters lie between pathwidth and treewidth, and we provide common structural properties on these parameters. For each parameter, we prove that the class of graphs having the parameter at most two is minor closed, and we characterize those classes in terms of a tree of cycles with additional conditions. Finally, we show that for each k≥3, the class of graphs with special treewidth, spaghetti treewidth, directed spaghetti treewidth, or strongly chordal treewidth, respectively at most k, is not closed under taking minors.

In the Intervalizing Coloured Graphs problem, one must decide for a given graph G = (V, E) with a proper vertex colouring of G whether G is the subgraph of a properly coloured interval graph. For the case that the number of colors is fixed, we give an exact algorithm that uses (Formula Presented.) time. We also give an (Formula Presented.) algorithm for the case that the number of colors is not fixed.

In the Intervalizing Coloured Graphs problem, one must decide for a given graph G = (V, E) with a proper vertex colouring of G whether G is the subgraph of a properly coloured interval graph. For the case that the number of colors is fixed, we give an exact algorithm that uses (Formula Presented.) time. We also give an (Formula Presented.) algorithm for the case that the number of colors is not fixed.

In the Intervalizing Coloured Graphs problem, one must decide for a given graph G = (V, E) with a proper vertex colouring of G whether G is the subgraph of a properly coloured interval graph. For the case that the number of colors is fixed, we give an exact algorithm that uses (Formula Presented.) time. We also give an (Formula Presented.) algorithm for the case that the number of colors is not fixed.

Computing an invariant of a graph such as treewidth and pathwidth is one of the fundamental problems in graph algorithms. In general, determining the pathwidth of a graph is NP-hard. In this paper, we propose several reduction methods for decreasing the instance size without changing the pathwidth, and implemented the methods together with an exact algorithm for computing pathwidth of graphs. Our experimental results show that the number of vertices in all chemical graphs in NCI database decreases by our reduction methods by 53.81% in average.

The harmonious coloring of an undirected simple graph is a vertex coloring such that adjacent vertices are assigned different colors and each pair of colors appears together on at most one edge. The harmonious chromatic number of a graph is the least number of colors used in such a coloring. The harmonious chromatic number of a path is known, whereas the problem to find the harmonious chromatic number is NP-hard even for trees with pathwidth at most 2. Hence, we consider the harmonious coloring of trees with pathwidth 1, which are also known as caterpillars. This paper shows the harmonious chromatic number of a caterpillar with at most one vertex of degree more than 2. We also show the upper bound of the harmonious chromatic number of a 3-regular caterpillar.

The notions of cutwidth and pathwidth of digraphs play a central role in the containment theory for tournaments, or more generally semi-complete digraphs, developed in a recent series of papers by Chudnovsky, Fradkin, Kim, Scott, and Seymour (Maria Chudnovsky, Alexandra Fradkin, and Paul Seymour, 2012; Maria Chudnovsky, Alex Scott, and Paul Seymour, 2011; Maria Chudnovsky and Paul D. Seymour, 2011; Alexandra Fradkin and Paul Seymour, 2010; Alexandra Fradkin and Paul Seymour, 2011; Ilhee Kim and Paul Seymour, 2012). In this work we introduce a new approach to computing these width measures on semi-complete digraphs, via degree orderings. Using the new technique we are able to reprove the main results of (Maria Chudnovsky, Alexandra Fradkin, and Paul Seymour, 2012; Alexandra Fradkin and Paul Seymour, 2011) in a unified and significantly simplified way, as well as obtain new results. First, we present polynomial-time approximation algorithms for both cutwidth and pathwidth, faster and simpler than the previously known ones; the most significant improvement is in case of pathwidth, where instead of previously known O(OPT)-approximation in fixed-parameter tractable time (Fedor V. Fomin and Michal Pilipczuk, 2013) we obtain a constant-factor approximation in polynomial time. Secondly, by exploiting the new set of obstacles for cutwidth and pathwidth, we show that topological containment and immersion in semi-complete digraphs can be tested in single-exponential fixed-parameter tractable time. Finally, we present how the new approach can be used to obtain exact fixed-parameter tractable algorithms for cutwidth and pathwidth, with single-exponential running time dependency on the optimal width.

A linkage of order k of a graph G is a subgraph with k components, each of which is a path. A linkage is vital if it spans all vertices, and no other linkage connects the same pairs of end vertices. We give a characterization of the graphs with a vital linkage of order 2: they are certain minors of a family of highly structured graphs.

A linkage of order k of a graph G is a subgraph with k components, each of which is a path. A linkage is vital if it spans all vertices, and no other linkage connects the same pairs of end vertices. We give a characterization of the graphs with a vital linkage of order 2: they are certain minors of a family of highly structured graphs.

It is proven that the connected pathwidth of any graph G is at most 2*pw(G)+1, where pw(G) is the pathwidth of G. The method is constructive, i.e. it yields an efficient algorithm that for a given path decomposition of width k computes a connected path decomposition of width at most 2k+1. The running time of the algorithm is O(dk^2), where d is the number of `bags' in the input path decomposition. The motivation for studying connected path decompositions comes from the connection between the pathwidth and some graph searching games. One of the advantages of the above bound for connected pathwidth is an inequality $csn(G) <= 2*sn(G)+3$, where $csn(G)$ is the connected search number of a graph $G$ and $sn(G)$ is its search number, which holds for any graph $G$. Moreover, the algorithm presented in this work can be used to convert efficiently a given search strategy using $k$ searchers into a connected one using $2k+3$ searchers and starting at arbitrary homebase.

A linkage of order k of a graph G is a subgraph with k components, each of which is a path. A linkage is vital if it spans all vertices, and no other linkage connects the same pairs of end vertices. We give a characterization of the graphs with a vital linkage of order 2: they are certain minors of a family of highly structured graphs.

A linkage of order k of a graph G is a subgraph with k components, each of which is a path. A linkage is vital if it spans all vertices, and no other linkage connects the same pairs of end vertices. We give a characterization of the graphs with a vital linkage of order 2: they are certain minors of a family of highly structured graphs.

Expansion is the way of generalizing different graph layout and searching problems. We initiate the study of connected expansion which naturally arises in a number of applications. Our main tool for this investigation is the branchwidth of a graph. In particular, we prove that any 2-edge-connected graph of branchwidth k has a {em connected} branch decom-po-si-tion of width k, i.e., a branch decomposition in which any cut separates two edge-sets that induce two connected subgraphs. Our proof is constructive, and is inspired from the existential proof of Seymour and Thomas (1994) for carvings. We also prove that the {em connected} search number (i.e., connected pathwidth) of any n-node graph of branchwidth k is at most O(klog n) and this bound is the best possible for parameters k and n. A first consequence of these results is that, for any graph, the connected search number is at most O(log n) times larger than the (standard) search number. The only bound known so far held for trees only. Another consequence is that the connected search number can be approximated in polynomial time up to a factor O(log{n}cdotlog{OPT}). That is, for any connected graph G, one can compute in polynomial time a connected search strategy for G that uses at most O (log{n}cdotlog{OPT}) times the optimal number OPT of searchers. The ratio O(log{n}cdotlog{OPT}) is the same as the best known approximation ratio for (standard) pathwidth, and any improvement for the approximation of connected search (i.e., connected pathwidth) would indeed produce an improvement for the approximation of pathwidth., Postprint (published version)

The cutwidth of a graph G is defined to be the smallest integer k such that the vertices of G can be arranged in a vertex ordering [v(1),...,v(n)] in a way that, for every i=1,...,n-1, there are at most k edges with the one endpoint in {v(1),...,v(i)} and the other in {v(i+1),ldots,v(n)}. We examine the problem of computing in polynomial time the cutwidth of a partial w-tree with bounded degree. In particular, we show how to construct an algorithm that, in n^O(w^2d) steps, computes the cutwidth of any partial w-tree with vertices of degree bounded by a fixed constant d. Our algorithm is constructive in the sense that it can be adapted to output the corresponding optimal vertex ordering. Also, it is the main subroutine of an algorithm computing the pathwidth of a bounded degree partial w-tree in n^O((wd)^2) steps., Postprint (published version)