A forbidden transition graph is a graph defined together with a set of permitted transitions i.e. unordered pair of adjacent edges that one may use consecutively in a walk in the graph. In this paper, we look for the smallest set of transitions needed to be able to go from any vertex of the given graph to any other. We prove that this problem is NP-hard and study approximation algorithms. We develop theoretical tools that help to study this problem.
We introduce the study of forcing sets in mathematical origami. The origami material folds flat along straight line segments called creases, each of which is assigned a folding direction of mountain or valley. A subset $F$ of creases is forcing if the global folding mountain/valley assignment can be deduced from its restriction to $F$. In this paper we focus on one particular class of foldable patterns called Miura-ori, which divide the plane into congruent parallelograms using horizontal lines and zig-zag vertical lines. We develop efficient algorithms for constructing a minimum forcing set of a Miura-ori map, and for deciding whether a given set of creases is forcing or not. We also provide tight bounds on the size of a forcing set, establishing that the standard mountain-valley assignment for the Miura-ori is the one that requires the most creases in its forcing sets. Additionally, given a partial mountain/valley assignment to a subset of creases of a Miura-ori map, we determine whether the assignment domain can be extended to a locally flat-foldable pattern on all the creases. At the heart of our results is a novel correspondence between flat-foldable Miura-ori maps and $3$-colorings of grid graphs.
We give polynomial-time approximation schemes for monotone maximization problems expressible in terms of distances (up to a fixed upper bound) and efficiently solvable in graphs of bounded treewidth. These schemes apply in all fractionally treewidth-fragile graph classes, a property that is true for many natural graph classes with sublinear separators. We also provide quasipolynomial-time approximation schemes for these problems in all classes with sublinear separators.
We study the computational complexity of two well-known graph transversal problems, namely Subset Feedback Vertex Set and Subset Odd Cycle Transversal, by restricting the input to $H$-free graphs, that is, to graphs that do not contain some fixed graph~$H$ as an induced subgraph. By combining known and new results, we determine the computational complexity of both problems on $H$-free graphs for every graph $H$ except when $H=sP_1+P_4$ for some $sgeq 1$. As part of our approach, we introduce the Subset Vertex Cover problem and prove that it is polynomial-time solvable for $(sP_1+P_4)$-free graphs for every $sgeq 1$.
Best match graphs (BMGs) are vertex-colored digraphs that naturally arise in mathematical phylogenetics to formalize the notion of evolutionary closest genes w.r.t. an a priori unknown phylogenetic tree. BMGs are explained by unique least resolved trees. We prove that the property of a rooted, leaf-colored tree to be least resolved for some BMG is preserved by the contraction of inner edges. For the special case of two-colored BMGs, this leads to a characterization of the least resolved trees (LRTs) of binary-explainable trees and a simple, polynomial-time algorithm for the minimum cardinality completion of the arc set of a BMG to reach a BMG that can be explained by a binary tree.