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Segment Routing is a recent network technology that helps optimizing network throughput by providing finer control over the routing paths. Instead of routing directly from a source to a target, packets are routed via intermediate waypoints. Between consecutive waypoints, the packets are routed according to traditional shortest path routing protocols. Bottlenecks in the network can be avoided by such rerouting, preventing overloading parts of the network. The associated NP-hard computational problem is Segment Routing: Given a network on $n$ vertices, $d$ traffic demands (vertex pairs), and a (small) number $k$, the task is to find for each demand pair at most $k$ waypoints such that with shortest path routing along these waypoints, all demands are fulfilled without exceeding the capacities of the network. We investigate if special structures of real-world communication networks could be exploited algorithmically. Our results comprise NP-hardness on graphs with constant treewidth even if only one waypoint per demand is allowed. We further exclude (under standard complexity assumptions) algorithms with running time $f(d) n^{g(k)}$ for any functions $f$ and $g$. We complement these lower bounds with polynomial-time solvable special cases.

Graph augmentation is a fundamental and well-studied problem that arises in network optimization. We consider a new variant of this model motivated by reconfigurable communication networks. In this variant, we consider a given physical network and the measured communication demands between the nodes. Our goal is to augment the given physical network with a matching, so that the shortest path lengths in the augmented network, weighted with the demands, are minimal.We prove that this problem is NP-hard, even if the physical network is a cycle. We then use results from demand-aware network design to provide a constant-factor approximation algorithm for adding a matching in case that only a few nodes in the network cause almost all the communication. For general real-world communication patterns, we design and evaluate a series of heuristics that can deal with arbitrary graphs as the underlying network structure. Our algorithms are validated experimentally using real-world traces (from e.g., Facebook) of data centers., Comment: This paper has been accepted to SIAM Symposium on Algorithm Engineering and Experiments (ALENEX25)

We analyze the computational complexity of the following computational problems called Bounded-Density Edge Deletion and Bounded-Density Vertex Deletion: Given a graph $G$, a budget $k$ and a target density $\tau_\rho$, are there $k$ edges ($k$ vertices) whose removal from $G$ results in a graph where the densest subgraph has density at most $\tau_\rho$? Here, the density of a graph is the number of its edges divided by the number of its vertices. We prove that both problems are polynomial-time solvable on trees and cliques but are NP-complete on planar bipartite graphs and split graphs. From a parameterized point of view, we show that both problems are fixed-parameter tractable with respect to the vertex cover number but W[1]-hard with respect to the solution size. Furthermore, we prove that Bounded-Density Edge Deletion is W[1]-hard with respect to the feedback edge number, demonstrating that the problem remains hard on very sparse graphs., Comment: To appear at SWAT 2024

We provide a general framework to exclude parameterized running times of the form $O(\ell^\beta+ n^\gamma)$ for problems that have polynomial running time lower bounds under hypotheses from fine-grained complexity. Our framework is based on cross-compositions from parameterized complexity. We (conditionally) exclude running times of the form $O(\ell^{{\gamma}/{(\gamma-1)} - \epsilon} + n^\gamma)$ for any $1<\gamma<2$ and $\epsilon>0$ for the following problems: - Longest Common Subsequence: Given two length-$n$ strings and $\ell\in\mathbb{N}$, is there a common subsequence of length $\ell$? - Discrete Fr\'echet Distance: Given two lists of $n$ points each and $k\in \mathbb{N}$, is the Fr\'echet distance of the lists at most $k$? Here $\ell$ is the maximum number of points which one list is ahead of the other list in an optimum traversal. Moreover, we exclude running times $O(\ell^{{2\gamma}/{(\gamma -1)}-\epsilon} + n^\gamma)$ for any $1<\gamma<3$ and $\epsilon>0$ for: - Negative Triangle: Given an edge-weighted graph with $n$ vertices, is there a triangle whose sum of edge-weights is negative? Here $\ell$ is the order of a maximum connected component. - Triangle Collection: Given a vertex-colored graph with $n$ vertices, is there for each triple of colors a triangle whose vertices have these three colors? Here $\ell$ is the order of a maximum connected component. - 2nd Shortest Path: Given an $n$-vertex edge-weighted directed graph, two vertices $s$ and $t$, and $k \in \mathbb{N}$, has the second longest $s$-$t$-path length at most $k$? Here $\ell$ is the directed feedback vertex set. Except for 2nd Shortest Path all these running time bounds are tight, that is, algorithms with running time $O(\ell^{{\gamma}/{(\gamma-1)}} + n^\gamma )$ for any $1 < \gamma < 2$ and $O(\ell^{{2\gamma}/{(\gamma -1)}} + n^\gamma)$ for any $1 < \gamma < 3$, respectively, are known.

Finding large "cliquish" subgraphs is a classic NP-hard graph problem. In this work, we focus on finding maximum $s$-clubs and $s$-plexes, i.e., graphs of diameter $s$ and graphs where each vertex is adjacent to all but $s$ vertices. Preprocessing based on Turing kernelization is a standard tool to tackle these problems, especially on sparse graphs. We provide a new parameterized analysis for the Turing kernelization and demonstrate their usefulness in practice. Moreover, we provide evidence that the new theoretical bounds indeed better explain the observed running times than the existing theoretical running time bounds. To this end, we suggest a general method to compare how well theoretical running time bounds fit to measured running times.

Given a graph and two integers $k$ and $\ell$, Partial Vertex Cover asks for a set of at most $k$ vertices whose deletion results in a graph with at most $\ell$ edges. Based on the expansion lemma, we provide a problem kernel with $(\ell + 2)(k + \ell)$ vertices. We then introduce a new, additive version of the expansion lemma and show it can be used to prove a kernel with $(\ell + 1)(k + \ell)$ vertices for $\ell \ge 1$.

Data reduction rules are an established method in the algorithmic toolbox for tackling computationally challenging problems. A data reduction rule is a polynomial-time algorithm that, given a problem instance as input, outputs an equivalent, typically smaller instance of the same problem. The application of data reduction rules during the preprocessing of problem instances allows in many cases to considerably shrink their size, or even solve them directly. Commonly, these data reduction rules are applied exhaustively and in some fixed order to obtain irreducible instances. It was often observed that by changing the order of the rules, different irreducible instances can be obtained. We propose to "undo" data reduction rules on irreducible instances, by which they become larger, and then subsequently apply data reduction rules again to shrink them. We show that this somewhat counter-intuitive approach can lead to significantly smaller irreducible instances. The process of undoing data reduction rules is not limited to "rolling back" data reduction rules applied to the instance during preprocessing. Instead, we formulate so-called backward rules, which essentially undo a data reduction rule, but without using any information about which data reduction rules were applied to it previously. In particular, based on the example of Vertex Cover we propose two methods applying backward rules to shrink the instances further. In our experiments we show that this way smaller irreducible instances consisting of real-world graphs from the SNAP and DIMACS datasets can be computed., Comment: extended abstract to appear at ESA 2022

We study the following two fixed-cardinality optimization problems (a maximization and a minimization variant). For a fixed $\alpha$ between zero and one we are given a graph and two numbers $k \in \mathbb{N}$ and $t \in \mathbb{Q}$. The task is to find a vertex subset $S$ of exactly $k$ vertices that has value at least (resp. at most for minimization) $t$. Here, the value of a vertex set computes as $\alpha$ times the number of edges with exactly one endpoint in $S$ plus $1-\alpha$ times the number of edges with both endpoints in $S$. These two problems generalize many prominent graph problems, such as Densest $k$-Subgraph, Sparsest $k$-Subgraph, Partial Vertex Cover, and Max ($k$,$n-k$)-Cut. In this work, we complete the picture of their parameterized complexity on several types of sparse graphs that are described by structural parameters. In particular, we provide kernelization algorithms and kernel lower bounds for these problems. A somewhat surprising consequence of our kernelizations is that Partial Vertex Cover and Max $(k,n-k)$-Cut not only behave in the same way but that the kernels for both problems can be obtained by the same algorithms., Comment: Extended abstract appeared in STACS '22

A recent report of Littmann [Commun. ACM '21] outlines the existence and the fatal impact of collusion rings in academic peer reviewing. We introduce and analyze the problem Cycle-Free Reviewing that aims at finding a review assignment without the following kind of collusion ring: A sequence of reviewers each reviewing a paper authored by the next reviewer in the sequence (with the last reviewer reviewing a paper of the first), thus creating a review cycle where each reviewer gives favorable reviews. As a result, all papers in that cycle have a high chance of acceptance independent of their respective scientific merit. We observe that review assignments computed using a standard Linear Programming approach typically admit many short review cycles. On the negative side, we show that Cycle-Free Reviewing is NP-hard in various restricted cases (i.e., when every author is qualified to review all papers and one wants to prevent that authors review each other's or their own papers or when every author has only one paper and is only qualified to review few papers). On the positive side, among others, we show that, in some realistic settings, an assignment without any review cycles of small length always exists. This result also gives rise to an efficient heuristic for computing (weighted) cycle-free review assignments, which we show to be of excellent quality in practice., Comment: Accepted to AAAI'22

In static graphs, the betweenness centrality of a graph vertex measures how many times this vertex is part of a shortest path between any two graph vertices. Betweenness centrality is efficiently computable and it is a fundamental tool in network science. Continuing and extending previous work, we study the efficient computability of betweenness centrality in temporal graphs (graphs with fixed vertex set but time-varying arc sets). Unlike in the static case, there are numerous natural notions of being a "shortest" temporal path (walk). Depending on which notion is used, it was already observed that the problem is #P-hard in some cases while polynomial-time solvable in others. In this conceptual work, we contribute towards classifying what a "shortest path (walk) concept" has to fulfill in order to gain polynomial-time computability of temporal betweenness centrality.

Given an undirected $n$-vertex graph and $k$ pairs of terminal vertices $(s_1,t_1), \ldots, (s_k,t_k)$, the $k$-Disjoint Shortest Paths ($k$-DSP)-problem asks whether there are $k$ pairwise vertex-disjoint paths $P_1,\ldots, P_k$ such that $P_i$ is a shortest $s_i$-$t_i$-path for each $i \in [k]$. Recently, Lochet [SODA 2021] provided an algorithm that solves $k$-DSP in $n^{O(k^{5^k})}$ time, answering a 20-year old question about the computational complexity of $k$-DSP for constant $k$. On the one hand, we present an improved $n^{O(k!k)}$-time algorithm based on a novel geometric view on this problem. For the special case $k=2$ on $m$-edge graphs, we show that the running time can be further reduced to $O(nm)$ by small modifications of the algorithm and a refined analysis. On the other hand, we show that $k$-DSP is W[1]-hard with respect to $k$, showing that the dependency of the degree of the polynomial running time on the parameter $k$ is presumably unavoidable.

Fox et al. [SIAM J. Comp. 2020] introduced a new parameter, called $c$-closure, for a parameterized study of clique enumeration problems. A graph $G$ is $c$-closed if every pair of vertices with at least $c$ common neighbors is adjacent. The $c$-closure of $G$ is the smallest $c$ such that $G$ is $c$-closed. We systematically explore the impact of $c$-closure on the computational complexity of detecting and enumerating small induced subgraphs. More precisely, for each graph $H$ on three or four vertices, we investigate parameterized polynomial-time algorithms for detecting $H$ and for enumerating all occurrences of $H$ in a given $c$-closed graph.

Editing a graph into a disjoint union of clusters is a standard optimization task in graph-based data clustering. Here, complementing classic work where the clusters shall be cliques, we focus on clusters that shall be 2-clubs, that is, subgraphs of diameter two. This naturally leads to the two NP-hard problems 2-Club Cluster Editing (the allowed editing operations are edge insertion and edge deletion) and 2-Club Cluster Vertex Deletion (the allowed editing operations are vertex deletions). Answering an open question from the literature, we show that 2-Club Cluster Editing is W[2]-hard with respect to the number of edge modifications, thus contrasting the fixed-parameter tractability result for the classic Cluster Editing problem (considering cliques instead of 2-clubs). Then focusing on 2-Club Cluster Vertex Deletion, which is easily seen to be fixed-parameter tractable, we show that under standard complexity-theoretic assumptions it does not have a polynomial-size problem kernel when parameterized by the number of vertex deletions. Nevertheless, we develop several effective data reduction and pruning rules, resulting in a competitive solver, clearly outperforming a standard CPLEX solver in most instances of an established biological test data set.

We investigate parameterized algorithms for the NP-hard problem Min-Power Asymmetric Connectivity (MinPAC) that has applications in wireless sensor networks. Given a directed arc-weighted graph, MinPAC asks for a strongly connected spanning subgraph minimizing the summed vertex costs. Here, the cost of each vertex is the weight of its heaviest outgoing arc in the chosen subgraph. We present linear-time algorithms for the cases where the number of strongly connected components in a so-called obligatory subgraph or the feedback edge number in the underlying undirected graph is constant. Complementing these results, we prove that the problem is W[2]-hard with respect to the solution cost, even on restricted graphs with one feedback arc and binary arc weights.

Dealing with NP-hard problems, kernelization is a fundamental notion for polynomial-time data reduction with performance guarantees: in polynomial time, a problem instance is reduced to an equivalent instance with size upper-bounded by a function of a parameter chosen in advance. Kernelization for weighted problems particularly requires to also shrink weights. Marx and V\'egh [ACM Trans. Algorithms 2015] and Etscheid et al. [J. Comput. Syst. Sci. 2017] used a technique of Frank and Tardos [Combinatorica 1987] to obtain polynomial-size kernels for weighted problems, mostly with additive goal functions. We characterize the function types that the technique is applicable to, which turns out to contain many non-additive functions. Using this insight, we systematically obtain kernelization results for natural problems in graph partitioning, network design, facility location, scheduling, vehicle routing, and computational social choice, thereby improving and generalizing results from the literature.

Node connectivity plays a central role in temporal network analysis. We provide a comprehensive study of various concepts of walks in temporal graphs, that is, graphs with fixed vertex sets but edge sets changing over time. Taking into account the temporal aspect leads to a rich set of optimization criteria for "shortest" walks. Extending and significantly broadening state-of-the-art work of Wu et al. [IEEE TKDE 2016], we provide an algorithm for computing optimal walks that is capable to deal with various optimization criteria and any linear combination of these. It runs in $O (|V| + |E| \log |E|)$ time where $|V|$ is the number of vertices and $|E|$ is the number of time edges. A central distinguishing factor to Wu et al.'s work is that our model allows to, motivated by real-world applications, respect waiting-time constraints for vertices, that is, the minimum and maximum waiting time allowed in intermediate vertices of a walk. Moreover, other than Wu et al. our algorithm also allows to search for walks that pass multiple subsequent edges in one time step, and it can optimize a richer set of optimization criteria. Our experimental studies indicate that our richer modeling can be achieved without significantly worsening the running time when compared to Wu et al.'s algorithms.

We introduce a dynamic version of the NP-hard graph problem Cluster Editing. The essential point here is to take into account dynamically evolving input graphs: Having a cluster graph (that is, a disjoint union of cliques) that represents a solution for the first input graph, can we cost-efficiently transform it into a "similar" cluster graph that is a solution for the second ("subsequent") input graph? This model is motivated by several application scenarios, including incremental clustering, the search for compromise clusterings, or also local search in graph-based data clustering. We thoroughly study six problem variants (edge editing, edge deletion, edge insertion; each combined with two distance measures between cluster graphs). We obtain both fixed-parameter tractability as well as (parameterized) hardness results, thus (except for three open questions) providing a fairly complete picture of the parameterized computational complexity landscape under the two perhaps most natural parameterizations: the distance of the new "similar" cluster graph to (i) the second input graph and to (ii) the input cluster graph.

Finding large "cliquish" subgraphs is a central topic in graph mining and community detection. A popular clique relaxation are 2-clubs: instead of asking for subgraphs of diameter one (these are cliques), one asks for subgraphs of diameter at most two (these are 2-clubs). A drawback of the 2-club model is that it produces star-like hub-and-spoke structures as maximum-cardinality solutions. Hence, we study 2-clubs with the additional constraint to be well-connected. More specifically, we investigate the algorithmic complexity for three variants of well-connected 2-clubs, all established in the literature: robust, hereditary, and "connected" 2-clubs. Finding these more cohesive 2-clubs is NP-hard; nevertheless, we develop an exact combinatorial algorithm, extensively using efficient data reduction rules. Besides several theoretical insights we provide a number of empirical results based on an engineered implementation of our exact algorithm. In particular, the algorithm significantly outperforms existing algorithms on almost all (sparse) real-world graphs we considered., Comment: To appear at European Journal of Operational Research

Finding a maximum-cardinality or maximum-weight matching in (edge-weighted) undirected graphs is among the most prominent problems of algorithmic graph theory. For $n$-vertex and $m$-edge graphs, the best known algorithms run in $\widetilde{O}(m\sqrt{n})$ time. We build on recent theoretical work focusing on linear-time data reduction rules for finding maximum-cardinality matchings and complement the theoretical results by presenting and analyzing (thereby employing the kernelization methodology of parameterized complexity analysis) new (near-)linear-time data reduction rules for both the unweighted and the positive-integer-weighted case. Moreover, we experimentally demonstrate that these data reduction rules provide significant speedups of the state-of-the art implementations for computing matchings in real-world graphs: the average speedup factor is 4.7 in the unweighted case and 12.72 in the weighted case., Comment: An extended abstract of this work appeared at ESA '18. This version has a new coauthor (Tomohiro Koana) and an extended experimental section including comparison against two further implementations for finding matchings. Moreover, it contains further data reduction rules (theoretical and practical findings) for Maximum-Cardinality Matching and improved theoretical bounds on the kernel sizes

We study the NP-hard Shortest Path Most Vital Edges problem arising in the context of analyzing network robustness. For an undirected graph with positive integer edge lengths and two designated vertices $s$ and $t$, the goal is to delete as few edges as possible in order to increase the length of the (new) shortest $st$-path as much as possible. This scenario has been studied from the viewpoint of parameterized complexity and approximation algorithms. We contribute to this line of research by providing refined computational tractability as well as hardness results. We achieve this by a systematic investigation of various problem-specific parameters and their influence on the computational complexity. Charting the border between tractability and intractability, we also identify numerous challenges for future research.

Diameter -- the task of computing the length of a longest shortest path -- is a fundamental graph problem. Assuming the Strong Exponential Time Hypothesis, there is no $O(n^{1.99})$-time algorithm even in sparse graphs [Roditty and Williams, 2013]. To circumvent this lower bound we aim for algorithms with running time $f(k)(n+m)$ where $k$ is a parameter and $f$ is a function as small as possible. We investigate which parameters allow for such running times. To this end, we systematically explore a hierarchy of structural graph parameters.

Betweenness centrality---measuring how many shortest paths pass through a vertex---is one of the most important network analysis concepts for assessing the relative importance of a vertex. The well-known algorithm of Brandes [J. Math. Sociol.~'01] computes, on an $n$-vertex and $m$-edge graph, the betweenness centrality of all vertices in $O(nm)$ worst-case time. In later work, significant empirical speedups were achieved by preprocessing degree-one vertices and by graph partitioning based on cut vertices. We contribute an algorithmic treatment of degree-two vertices, which turns out to be much richer in mathematical structure than the case of degree-one vertices. Based on these three algorithmic ingredients, we provide a strengthened worst-case running time analysis for betweenness centrality algorithms. More specifically, we prove an adaptive running time bound $O(kn)$, where $k < m$ is the size of a minimum feedback edge set of the input graph., Comment: An extended abstract of this work appears in the proceedings of the 29th International Symposium on Algorithms and Computation (ISAAC 2018)

Kernelization is an important tool in parameterized algorithmics. Given an input instance accompanied by a parameter, the goal is to compute in polynomial time an equivalent instance of the same problem such that the size of the reduced instance only depends on the parameter and not on the size of the original instance. In this paper, we provide a first conceptual study on limits of kernelization for several polynomial-time solvable problems. For instance, we consider the problem of finding a triangle with negative sum of edge weights parameterized by the maximum degree of the input graph. We prove that a linear-time computable strict kernel of truly subcubic size for this problem violates the popular APSP-conjecture., Comment: An extended abstract appeared in Proceedings of the 14th Conference on Computability in Europe (CiE 2018)

We study an NP-hard problem motivated by energy-efficiently maintaining the connectivity of a symmetric wireless communication network: Given an edge-weighted $n$-vertex graph, find a connected spanning subgraph of minimum cost, where the cost is determined by letting each vertex pay the most expensive edge incident to it in the subgraph. On the negative side, we show that $o(\log n)$-approximating the difference $d$ between the optimal solution cost and a natural lower bound is NP-hard and that, under the Exponential Time Hypothesis, there are no exact algorithms running in $2^{o(n)}$ time or in $f(d)\cdot n^{O(1)}$ time for any computable function $f$. Moreover, we show that the special case of connecting $c$ network components with minimum additional cost generally cannot be polynomial-time reduced to instances of size $c^{O(1)}$ unless the polynomial-time hierarchy collapses. On the positive side, we provide an algorithm that reconnects $O(\log n)$ connected components with minimum additional cost in polynomial time. These algorithms are motivated by application scenarios of monitoring areas or where an existing sensor network may fall apart into several connected components due to sensor faults. In experiments, the algorithm outperforms CPLEX with known ILP formulations when $n$ is sufficiently large compared to $c$., Comment: Additional experiments, lower bounds strengthened to metric case, added kernelization lower bounds

Finding maximum-cardinality matchings in undirected graphs is arguably one of the most central graph problems. For general m-edge and n-vertex graphs, it is well-known to be solvable in $O(m \sqrt{n})$ time. We develop a linear-time algorithm to find maximum-cardinality matchings on cocomparability graphs, a prominent subclass of perfect graphs that contains interval graphs as well as permutation graphs. Our algorithm is based on the recently discovered Lexicographic Depth First Search (LDFS)., Comment: 16 pages, 4 figures. to appear at SIDMA arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1609.08879

Hyperbolicity measures, in terms of (distance) metrics, how close a given graph is to being a tree. Due to its relevance in modeling real-world networks, hyperbolicity has seen intensive research over the last years. Unfortunately, the best known algorithms for computing the hyperbolicity number of a graph (the smaller, the more tree-like) have running time $O(n^4)$, where $n$ is the number of graph vertices. Exploiting the framework of parameterized complexity analysis, we explore possibilities for "linear-time FPT" algorithms to compute hyperbolicity. For instance, we show that hyperbolicity can be computed in time $O(2^{O(k)} + n +m)$ ($m$ being the number of graph edges) while at the same time, unless the SETH fails, there is no $2^{o(k)}n^2$-time algorithm.

The task of listing all triangles in an undirected graph is a fundamental graph primitive with numerous applications. It is trivially solvable in time cubic in the number of vertices. It has seen a significant body of work contributing to both theoretical aspects (e.g., lower and upper bounds on running time, adaption to new computational models) as well as practical aspects (e.g. algorithms tuned for large graphs). Motivated by the fact that the worst-case running time is cubic, we perform a systematic parameterized complexity study of triangle enumeration. We provide both positive results (new enumerative kernelizations, "subcubic" parameterized solving algorithms) as well as negative results (presumable uselessness in terms of "faster" parameterized algorithms of certain parameters such as graph diameter). To this end, we introduce new and extend previous concepts., Comment: Appeared at FCT 2017

Finding the origin of short phrases propagating through the web has been formalized by Leskovec et al. [ACM SIGKDD 2009] as DAG Partitioning: given an arc-weighted directed acyclic graph on $n$ vertices and $m$ arcs, delete arcs with total weight at most $k$ such that each resulting weakly-connected component contains exactly one sink---a vertex without outgoing arcs. DAG Partitioning is NP-hard. We show an algorithm to solve DAG Partitioning in $O(2^k \cdot (n+m))$ time, that is, in linear time for fixed $k$. We complement it with linear-time executable data reduction rules. Our experiments show that, in combination, they can optimally solve DAG Partitioning on simulated citation networks within five minutes for $k\leq190$ and $m$ being $10^7$ and larger. We use our obtained optimal solutions to evaluate the solution quality of Leskovec et al.'s heuristic. We show that Leskovec et al.'s heuristic works optimally on trees and generalize this result by showing that DAG Partitioning is solvable in $2^{O(w^2)}\cdot n$ time if a width-$w$ tree decomposition of the input graph is given. Thus, we improve an algorithm and answer an open question of Alamdari and Mehrabian [WAW 2012]. We complement our algorithms by lower bounds on the running time of exact algorithms and on the effectivity of data reduction., Comment: A preliminary version of this article appeared at CIAC'13. Besides providing full proof details, this revised and extended version improves our O(2^k * n^2)-time algorithm to run in O(2^k * (n+m)) time and provides linear-time executable data reduction rules. Moreover, we experimentally evaluated the algorithm and compared it to known heuristics

Finding maximum-cardinality matchings in undirected graphs is arguably one of the most central graph primitives. For $m$-edge and $n$-vertex graphs, it is well-known to be solvable in $O(m\sqrt{n})$ time; however, for several applications this running time is still too slow. We investigate how linear-time (and almost linear-time) data reduction (used as preprocessing) can alleviate the situation. More specifically, we focus on (almost) linear-time kernelization. We start a deeper and systematic study both for general graphs and for bipartite graphs. Our data reduction algorithms easily comply (in form of preprocessing) with every solution strategy (exact, approximate, heuristic), thus making them attractive in various settings., Comment: Available as 'Online First' in Algorithmica

In graph modification problems, one is given a graph G and the goal is to apply a minimum number of modification operations (such as edge deletions) to G such that the resulting graph fulfills a certain property. For example, the Cluster Deletion problem asks to delete as few edges as possible such that the resulting graph is a disjoint union of cliques. Graph modification problems appear in numerous applications, including the analysis of biological and social networks. Typically, graph modification problems are NP-hard, making them natural candidates for parameterized complexity studies. We discuss several fruitful interactions between the development of fixed-parameter algorithms and the design of heuristics for graph modification problems, featuring quite different aspects of mutual benefits., Comment: Invited Paper at the 41st International Workshop on Graph-Theoretic Concepts in Computer Science (WG 15)

There has been intensive work on the parameterized complexity of the typically NP-hard task to edit undirected graphs into graphs fulfilling certain given vertex degree constraints. In this work, we lift the investigations to the case of directed graphs; herein, we focus on arc insertions. To this end, we develop a general two-stage framework which consists of efficiently solving a problem-specific number problem and transferring its solution to a solution for the graph problem by applying flow computations. In this way, we obtain fixed-parameter tractability and polynomial kernelizability results, with the central parameter being the maximum vertex in- or outdegree of the output digraph. Although there are certain similarities with the much better studied undirected case, the flow computation used in the directed case seems not to work for the undirected case while $f$-factor computations as used in the undirected case seem not to work for the directed case.

The composition technique is a popular method for excluding polynomial-size problem kernels for NP-hard parameterized problems. We present a new technique exploiting triangle-based fractal structures for extending the range of applicability of compositions. Our technique makes it possible to prove new no-polynomial-kernel results for a number of problems dealing with length-bounded cuts. In particular, answering an open question of Golovach and Thilikos [Discrete Optim. 2011], we show that, unless NP $\subseteq$ coNP / poly, the NP-hard Length-Bounded Edge-Cut (LBEC) problem (delete at most $k$ edges such that the resulting graph has no $s$-$t$ path of length shorter than $\ell$) parameterized by the combination of $k$ and $\ell$ has no polynomial-size problem kernel. Our framework applies to planar as well as directed variants of the basic problems and also applies to both edge and vertex deletion problems. Along the way, we show that LBEC remains NP-hard on planar graphs, a result which we believe is interesting in its own right., Comment: An extended abstract appeared in Proc. of the 43rd International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2016). A full version will appear in SIAM Journal on Discrete Mathematics (SIDMA)

We study computational aspects of the General Position Subset Selection problem defined as follows: Given a set of points in the plane, find a maximum-cardinality subset of points in general position. We prove that General Position Subset Selection is NP-hard, APX-hard, and give several fixed-parameter tractability results as well as a subexponential running time lower bound based on the Exponential Time Hypothesis., Comment: 17 pages, improved problem kernel wrt. dual parameter h, added a figure

In the Shift Bribery problem, we are given an election (based on preference orders), a preferred candidate $p$, and a budget. The goal is to ensure that $p$ wins by shifting $p$ higher in some voters' preference orders. However, each such shift request comes at a price (depending on the voter and on the extent of the shift) and we must not exceed the given budget. We study the parameterized computational complexity of Shift Bribery with respect to a number of parameters (pertaining to the nature of the solution sought and the size of the election) and several classes of price functions. When we parameterize Shift Bribery by the number of affected voters, then for each of our voting rules (Borda, Maximin, Copeland) the problem is W[2]-hard. If, instead, we parameterize by the number of positions by which $p$ is shifted in total,then the problem is fixed-parameter tractable for Borda and Maximin,and is W[1]-hard for Copeland. If we parameterize by the budget, then the results depend on the price function class. We also show that Shift Bribery tends to be tractable when parameterized by the number of voters, but that the results for the number of candidates are more enigmatic.

We study provably effective and efficient data reduction for a class of NP-hard graph modification problems based on vertex degree properties. We show fixed-parameter tractability for NP-hard graph completion (that is, edge addition) cases while we show that there is no hope to achieve analogous results for the corresponding vertex or edge deletion versions. Our algorithms are based on transforming graph completion problems into efficiently solvable number problems and exploiting f-factor computations for translating the results back into the graph setting. Our core observation is that we encounter a win-win situation: either the number of edge additions is small or the problem is polynomial-time solvable. This approach helps in answering an open question by Mathieson and Szeider [JCSS 2012] concerning the polynomial kernelizability of Degree Constraint Edge Addition and leads to a general method of approaching polynomial-time preprocessing for a wider class of degree sequence completion problems., Comment: 24 pages. Conference version appeared at SWAT 2014. Journal version to appear in JCSS 2016

Given an undirected graph with edge costs and edge demands, the Capacitated Arc Routing problem (CARP) asks for minimum-cost routes for equal-capacity vehicles so as to satisfy all demands. Constant-factor polynomial-time approximation algorithms were proposed for CARP with triangle inequality, while CARP was claimed to be NP-hard to approximate within any constant factor in general. Correcting this claim, we show that any factor {\alpha} approximation for CARP with triangle inequality yields a factor {\alpha} approximation for the general CARP.

In this paper, we consider the Target Set Selection problem: given a graph and a threshold value $thr(v)$ for any vertex $v$ of the graph, find a minimum size vertex-subset to "activate" s.t. all the vertices of the graph are activated at the end of the propagation process. A vertex $v$ is activated during the propagation process if at least $thr(v)$ of its neighbors are activated. This problem models several practical issues like faults in distributed networks or word-to-mouth recommendations in social networks. We show that for any functions $f$ and $\rho$ this problem cannot be approximated within a factor of $\rho(k)$ in $f(k) \cdot n^{O(1)}$ time, unless FPT = W[P], even for restricted thresholds (namely constant and majority thresholds). We also study the cardinality constraint maximization and minimization versions of the problem for which we prove similar hardness results.

Motivated by a strongly growing interest in anonymizing social network data, we investigate the NP-hard Degree Anonymization problem: given an undirected graph, the task is to add a minimum number of edges such that the graph becomes k-anonymous. That is, for each vertex there have to be at least k-1 other vertices of exactly the same degree. The model of degree anonymization has been introduced by Liu and Terzi [ACM SIGMOD'08], who also proposed and evaluated a two-phase heuristic. We present an enhancement of this heuristic, including new algorithms for each phase which significantly improve on the previously known theoretical and practical running times. Moreover, our algorithms are optimized for large-scale social networks and provide upper and lower bounds for the optimal solution. Notably, on about 26 % of the real-world data we provide (provably) optimal solutions; whereas in the other cases our upper bounds significantly improve on known heuristic solutions.

The NP-hard 2-Club problem is, given an undirected graph G=(V,E) and l\in N, to decide whether there is a vertex set S\subseteq V of size at least l such that the induced subgraph G[S] has diameter at most two. We make progress towards a systematic classification of the complexity of 2-Club with respect to a hierarchy of prominent structural graph parameters. First, we present the following tight NP-hardness results: 2-Club is NP-hard on graphs that become bipartite by deleting one vertex, on graphs that can be covered by three cliques, and on graphs with domination number two and diameter three. Then, we consider the parameter h-index of the input graph. This parameter is motivated by real-world instances and the fact that 2-Club is fixed-parameter tractable with respect to the larger parameter maximum degree. We present an algorithm that solves 2-Club in |V|^{f(k)} time with k being the h-index. By showing W[1]-hardness for this parameter, we provide evidence that the above algorithm cannot be improved to a fixed-parameter algorithm. Furthermore, the reduction used for this hardness result can be modified to show that 2-Club is NP-hard if the input graph has constant degeneracy. Finally, we show that 2-Club is fixed-parameter tractable with respect to distance to cographs., Comment: An extended abstract of this paper appeared in Proceedings of the 39th International Conference on Current Trends in Theory and Practice of Computer Science (SOFSEM'13), Jan. 2013, volume 7741 of LNCS, pages 233-243, Springer, 2013

In this paper, we consider the problem of maximizing the spread of influence through a social network. Given a graph with a threshold value~$thr(v)$ attached to each vertex~$v$, the spread of influence is modeled as follows: A vertex~$v$ becomes "active" (influenced) if at least $thr(v)$ of its neighbors are active. In the corresponding optimization problem the objective is then to find a fixed number of vertices to activate such that the number of activated vertices at the end of the propagation process is maximum. We show that this problem is strongly inapproximable in fpt-time with respect to (w.r.t.) parameter $k$ even for very restrictive thresholds. In the case that the threshold of each vertex equals its degree, we prove that the problem is inapproximable in polynomial time and it becomes $r(n)$-approximable in fpt-time w.r.t. parameter $k$ for any strictly increasing function $r$. Moreover, we show that the decision version is W[1]-hard w.r.t. parameter $k$ but becomes fixed-parameter tractable on bounded degree graphs.