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We show that every graph with pathwidth strictly less than a that contains no path on 2 b vertices as a subgraph has treedepth at most 10ab. The bound is best possible up to a constant factor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The circumference of a graph G with at least one cycle is the length of a longest cycle in G. A classic result of Birmel\'e [J. Graph Theory, 43 (2003), pp. 24--25] states that the treewidth of G is at most its circumference minus 1. In case G is 2-connected, this upper bound also holds for the pathwidth of G; in fact, even the treedepth of G is upper bounded by its circumference (Bria\'nski et al. [Treedepth vs circumference, Combinatorica, 43 (2023), pp. 659--664]). In this paper, we study whether similar bounds hold when replacing the circumference of G by its cocircumference, defined as the largest size of a bond in G, an inclusionwise minimal set of edges F such that G F has more components than G. In matroidal terms, the cocircumference of G is the circumference of the bond matroid of G. Our first result is the following "dual" version of Birmel'e's theorem: The treewidth of a graph G is at most its cocircumference. Our second and main result is an upper bound of 3k 2 on the pathwidth of a 2-connected graph G with cocircumference k. Contrary to circumference, no such bound holds for the treedepth of G. Our two upper bounds are best possible up to a constant factor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given two n-vertex graphs G1 and G2 of bounded treewidth, is there an n-vertex graph G of bounded treewidth having subgraphs isomorphic to G1 and G2? Our main result is a negative answer to this question, in a strong sense: we show that the answer is no even if G1 is a binary tree and G2 is a ternary tree. We also provide an extensive study of cases where such "gluing"" is possible. In particular, we prove that if G1 has treewidth k and G2 has pathwidth \l, then there is an n-vertex graph of treewidth at most k + 3\l + 1 containing both G1 and G2 as subgraphs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 , V P , 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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We describe a polynomial-time algorithm which, given a graph G with treewidth t, approximates the path-width of G to within a ratio of O(t√log t). This is the first algorithm to achieve an f(t)-approximation for some function f. Our approach builds on the following key insight: every graph with large pathwidth has large treewidth or contains a subdivision of a large complete binary tree. Specifically, we show that every graph with pathwidth at least th + 2 has treewidth at least t or contains a subdivision of a complete binary tree of height h + 1. The bound th + 2 is best possible up to a multiplicative constant. This result was motivated by, and implies (with c = 2), the following conjecture of Kawarabayashi and Rossman (SODA'18): there exists a universal constant c such that every graph with pathwidth Ω(kc) has treewidth at least k or contains a subdivision of a complete binary tree of height k. Our main technical algorithm takes a graph G and some (not necessarily optimal) tree decomposition of G of width t' in the input, and it computes in polynomial time an integer h, a certificate that G has pathwidth at least h, and a path decomposition of G of width at most (t' + 1)h + 1. The certificate is closely related to (and implies) the existence of a subdivision of a complete binary tree of height h. The approximation algorithm for pathwidth is then obtained by combining this algorithm with the approximation algorithm of Feige, Hajiaghayi, and Lee (STOC'05) for treewidth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The localization game is a pursuit-evasion game analogous to Cops and Robbers, where the robber is invisible and the cops send distance probes in an attempt to identify the location of the robber. We present a novel graph parameter called the localization capture time, which measures how long the localization game lasts assuming optimal play. We conjecture that the localization capture time is linear in the order of the graph, and show that the conjecture holds for graph families such as trees and interval graphs. We study bounds on the localization capture time for trees and its monotone property on induced subgraphs of trees and more general graphs. We give upper bounds for the localization capture time on the incidence graphs of projective planes. We finish with new bounds on the localization number and localization capture time using treewidth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Maximum Covering Location Problem (MCLP) is a well-studied problem in the field of operations research. Given a network with positive or negative demands on the nodes, a positive integer k, the MCLP seeks to find k potential facility centers in the network such that the neighborhood coverage is maximized. We study the variant of MCLP where edges of the network are subject to random failures due to some disruptive events. One of the popular models capturing the unreliable nature of the facility location is the linear reliability ordering (LRO) model. In this model, with every edge e of the network, we associate its survival probability 0 ≤ pe ≤ 1, or equivalently, its failure probability 1 − pe. The failure correlation in LRO is the following: If an edge e fails then every edge e ′ with p e ′ ≤ p e surely fails. The task is to identify the positions of k facilities that maximize the expected coverage. We refer to this problem as Expected Coverage problem. We study the Expected Coverage problem from the parameterized complexity perspective and obtain the following results. 1. For the parameter pathwidth, we show that the Expected Coverage problem is W[1]-hard. We find this result a bit surprising, because the variant of the problem with non-negative demands is fixed-parameter tractable (FPT) parameterized by the treewidth of the input graph. 2. We complement the lower bound by the proof that Expected Coverage is FPT being parameterized by the treewidth and the maximum vertex degree. We give an algorithm that solves the problem in time 2 O (tw log Δ) n O (1) , where tw is the treewidth, Δ is the maximum vertex degree, and n the number of vertices of the input graph. In particular, since Δ ≤ n, it means the problem is solvable in time n O (tw) , that is, is in XP parameterized by treewidth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Graph associahedra are generalized permutohedra arising as special cases of nestohedra and hypergraphic polytopes. The graph associahedron of a graph G encodes the combinatorics of search trees on G, defined recursively by a root r together with search trees on each of the connected components of G − r. In particular, the skeleton of the graph associahedron is the rotation graph of those search trees. We investigate the diameter of graph associahedra as a function of some graph parameters. It is known that the diameter of the associahedra of paths of length n, the classical associahedra, is 2n - 6 for a large enough n. We give a tight bound of Θ(m) on the diameter of trivially perfect graph associahedra on m edges. We consider the maximum diameter of associahedra of graphs on n vertices and of given tree-depth, treewidth, or pathwidth, and give lower and upper bounds as a function of these parameters. Finally, we prove that the maximum diameter of associahedra of graphs of pathwidth two is Θ(n log n). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on the similarity of a graph to being a tree—called the treewidth of the graph—has seen an enormous rise within the last decade, but a practically fast algorithm for this task has been discovered only recently by Tamaki (ESA 2017). It is based on dynamic programming and makes use of the fact that the number of positive subinstances is typically substantially smaller than the number of all subinstances. Algorithms producing only such subinstances are called positive-instance driven (PID). The parameter treedepth has a similar story. It was popularized through the graph sparsity project and is theoretically well understood—but the first practical algorithm was discovered only recently by Trimble (IPEC 2020) and is based on the same paradigm. We give an alternative and unifying view on such algorithms from the perspective of the corresponding configuration graphs in certain two-player games. This results in a single algorithm that can compute a wide range of important graph parameters such as treewidth, pathwidth, and treedepth. We complement this algorithm with a novel randomized data structure that accelerates the enumeration of subproblems in positive-instance driven algorithms.

The field of knowledge compilation establishes the tractability of many tasks by studying how to compile them to Boolean circuit classes obeying some requirements such as structuredness, decomposability, and determinism. However, in other settings such as intensional query evaluation on databases, we obtain Boolean circuits that satisfy some width bounds, e.g., they have bounded treewidth or pathwidth. In this work, we give a systematic picture of many circuit classes considered in knowledge compilation and show how they can be systematically connected to width measures, through upper and lower bounds. Our upper bounds show that bounded-treewidth circuits can be constructively converted to d-SDNNFs, in time linear in the circuit size and singly exponential in the treewidth; and that bounded-pathwidth circuits can similarly be converted to uOBDDs. We show matching lower bounds on the compilation of monotone DNF or CNF formulas to structured targets, assuming a constant bound on the arity (size of clauses) and degree (number of occurrences of each variable): any d-SDNNF (resp., SDNNF) for such a DNF (resp., CNF) must be of exponential size in its treewidth, and the same holds for uOBDDs (resp., n-OBDDs) when considering pathwidth. Unlike most previous work, our bounds apply to any formula of this class, not just a well-chosen family. Hence, we show that pathwidth and treewidth respectively characterize the efficiency of compiling monotone DNFs to uOBDDs and d-SDNNFs with compilation being singly exponential in the corresponding width parameter. We also show that our lower bounds on CNFs extend to unstructured compilation targets, with an exponential lower bound in the treewidth (resp., pathwidth) when compiling monotone CNFs of constant arity and degree to DNNFs (resp., nFBDDs). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Similar to the satisfiability (SAT) problem, which can be seen to be the archetypical problem for NP, the quantified Boolean formula problem (QBF) is the archetypical problem for PSPACE. Recently, Atserias and Oliva (2014) showed that, unlike for SAT, many of the well-known decompositional parameters (such as treewidth and pathwidth) do not allow efficient algorithms for QBF. The main reason for this seems to be the lack of awareness of these parameters towards the dependencies between variables of a QBF formula. In this paper we extend the ordinary pathwidth to the QBF-setting by introducing prefix pathwidth, which takes into account the dependencies between variables in a QBF, and show that it leads to an efficient algorithm for QBF. We hope that our approach will help to initiate the study of novel tailor-made decompositional parameters for QBF and thereby help to lift the success of these decompositional parameters from SAT to QBF. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work we consider two two-criteria optimization problems: given an input graph, the goal is to find its interval (or chordal) supergraph that minimizes the number of edges and its clique number simultaneously. For the interval supergraph, the problem can be restated as simultaneous minimization of the path width pw(G) and the profile p(G) of the input graph G. We prove that for an arbitrary graph G and an integer t ∈ {1, ... , pw(G) + 1}, there exists an interval supergraph G′ of G such that for its clique number it holds ω (G ′) ≤ (1 + 2 t) (pw (G) + 1) and the number of its edges is bounded by |E(G′)| ≤ (t + 2)p(G). In other words, the pathwidth and the profile of a graph can be simultaneously minimized within the factors of 1 + 2 t (plus a small constant) and t + 2, respectively. Note that for a fixed t, both upper bounds provide constant factor approximations. On the negative side, we show an example that proves that, for some graphs, there is no solution in which both parameters are optimal. In case of finding a chordal supergraph, the two corresponding graph parameters that reflect its clique size and number of edges are the treewidth and fill-in. We obtain that the treewidth and the fill-in problems are also 'orthogonal' in the sense that for some graphs, a solution that minimizes one of those parameters cannot minimize the other. As a motivating example, we recall graph searching games which illustrates a need of simultaneous minimization of these pairs of graph parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As technology advances and the spreading of wireless devices grows, the establishment of interconnection networks is becoming crucial. Main activities that involve most of the people concern retrieving and sharing information from everywhere. In heterogeneous networks, devices can communicate by means of multiple interfaces. The choice of the most suitable interfaces to activate (switch-on) at each device results in the establishment of different connections. A connection is established when at its endpoints the devices activate at least one common interface. Each interface is assumed to consume a specific percentage of energy for its activation. This is referred to as the cost of an interface. Due to energy consumption issues, and the fact that most of the devices are battery powered, special effort must be devoted to suitable solutions that prolong the network lifetime. In this paper, we consider the so-called p-Coverage problem where each device can activate at most p of its available interfaces in order to establish all the desired connections of a given network of devices. As the problem has been shown to be NP -hard even for p = 2 and unitary costs of the interfaces, algorithmic design activities have focused in particular topologies where the problem is optimally solvable. Following this trend, we first show that the problem is polynomially solvable for graphs (modeling the underlying network) of bounded treewidth by means of the Courcelle’s theorem. Then, we provide two optimal polynomial time algorithms to solve the problem in two subclasses of graphs with bounded treewidth that are graphs of bounded pathwidth and graphs of bounded carvingwidth. The two solutions are obtained by means of dynamic programming techniques.

The treewidth of a graph is an important invariant in structural and algorithmic graph theory. This paper studies the treewidth of line graphs . We show that determining the treewidth of the line graph of a graph G is equivalent to determining the minimum vertex congestion of an embedding of G into a tree. Using this result, we prove sharp lower bounds in terms of both the minimum degree and average degree of G . These results are precise enough to exactly determine the treewidth of the line graph of a complete graph and other interesting examples. We also improve the best known upper bound on the treewidth of a line graph. Analogous results are proved for pathwidth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

So-called ordered variants of the classical notions of pathwidth and treewidth are introduced and proposed as proof theoretically meaningful complexity measures for the directed acyclic graphs underlying proofs. Ordered pathwidth is roughly the same as proof space and the ordered treewidth of a proof is meant to serve as a measure of how far it is from being treelike. Length-space lower bounds for k -DNF refutations are generalized to arbitrary infinity axioms and strengthened in that the space measure is relaxed to ordered treewidth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We give asymptotically exact values for the treewidth tw(G) of a random geometric graph G ∈ G(n, r) in [0, √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) = Θ(log n/log log n), and for c being sufficiently large, and r = r(n) ≥ c, tw(G) = Θ(r√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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider relations between the size, treewidth, and local crossing number (maximum number of crossings per edge) of graphs embedded on topological surfaces. We show that an n-vertex graph embedded on a surface of genus g with at most k crossings per edge has treewidth O(√(g + 1)(k + 1)n) and layered treewidth O((g + 1)k) and t hat these bounds are tight up to a constant factor. In the special case of g = 0, so-called k-planar graphs, the treewidth bound is O(√((k + 1)n), which is tight and improves upon a known O( (k + 1)3/4n1/2) bound. Analogous results are proved for map graphs defined with respect to any surface. Finally, we show that for g < m, every m-edge graph can be embedded on a surface of genus g with O((m/(g + 1)) log² g) crossings per edge, which is tight to a polylogarithmic factor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the number of vertices, Vertex Cover Number is the largest of the classical graph parameters and has more and more frequently been used as a separate parameter in parameterized problems, including problems that are not directly related to the Vertex Cover Number . Here we consider the treewidth and pathwidth problems parameterized by k , the size of a minimum vertex cover of the input graph. We show that the pathwidth and treewidth can be computed in O ∗ ( 3 k ) time. This complements recent polynomial kernel results for treewidth and pathwidth parameterized by the Vertex Cover Number . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We prove a general reduction theorem which allows us to extend bounds for certain graph parameters on cubic graphs to bounds for general graphs taking into account the individual vertex degrees. As applications, we give an algorithm for Max $$2$$ -CSP whose complexity matches the algorithm of Scott and Sorkin in the case of $$d$$ -regular graphs, $$d \le 5$$ , but is otherwise faster. It also improves on the previously fastest known algorithm in terms of the average degree, given by Golovnev and Kutzkov. Also from the general theorem, we derive a bound for the pathwidth of a general graph which equals that of Fomin et al. and Gaspers for graphs of degree at most $$6$$ , but is smaller otherwise, and use this to give an improved exponential-space algorithm for Max $$2$$ -CSP. Finally we use the general result to give a faster algorithm for Max $$2$$ -CSP on claw-free graphs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Non-deterministic graph searching was introduced by Fomin et al. to provide a unified approach for pathwidth, treewidth, and their interpretations in terms of graph searching games. Given q ≥ 0 , the q -limited search number, s q ( G ) , of a graph G is the smallest number of searchers required to capture an invisible fugitive in G , when the searchers are allowed to know the position of the fugitive at most q times. The search parameter s 0 ( G ) corresponds to the pathwidth of a graph G , and s ∞ ( G ) to its treewidth. Determining s q ( G ) is NP-complete for any fixed q ≥ 0 in general graphs and s 0 ( T ) can be computed in linear time in trees, however the complexity of the problem on trees has been unknown for any q > 0 . We introduce a new variant of graph searching called restricted non-deterministic. The corresponding parameter is denoted by rs q and is shown to be equal to the non-deterministic graph searching parameter s q for q = 0 , 1 , and at most twice s q for any q ≥ 2 (for any graph G ). Our main result is a polynomial time algorithm that computes rs q ( T ) for any tree T and any q ≥ 0 . This provides a 2-approximation of s q ( T ) for any tree T , and shows that the decision problem associated to s 1 is polynomial in the class of trees. Our proofs are based on a new decomposition technique for trees which might be of independent interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]