No Arabic abstract
Motivated by recent computational models for redistricting and detection of gerrymandering, we study the following problem on graph partitions. Given a graph $G$ and an integer $kgeq 1$, a $k$-district map of $G$ is a partition of $V(G)$ into $k$ nonempty subsets, called districts, each of which induces a connected subgraph of $G$. A switch is an operation that modifies a $k$-district map by reassigning a subset of vertices from one district to an adjacent district; a 1-switch is a switch that moves a single vertex. We study the connectivity of the configuration space of all $k$-district maps of a graph $G$ under 1-switch operations. We give a combinatorial characterization for the connectedness of this space that can be tested efficiently. We prove that it is NP-complete to decide whether there exists a sequence of 1-switches that takes a given $k$-district map into another; and NP-hard to find the shortest such sequence (even if a sequence of polynomial length is known to exist). We also present efficient algorithms for computing a sequence of 1-switches that takes a given $k$-district map into another when the space is connected, and show that these algorithms perform a worst-case optimal number of switches up to constant factors.
Motivated by applications in gerrymandering detection, we study a reconfiguration problem on connected partitions of a connected graph $G$. A partition of $V(G)$ is emph{connected} if every part induces a connected subgraph. In many applications, it is desirable to obtain parts of roughly the same size, possibly with some slack $s$. A emph{Balanced Connected $k$-Partition with slack $s$}, denoted emph{$(k,s)$-BCP}, is a partition of $V(G)$ into $k$ nonempty subsets, of sizes $n_1,ldots , n_k$ with $|n_i-n/k|leq s$, each of which induces a connected subgraph (when $s=0$, the $k$ parts are perfectly balanced, and we call it emph{$k$-BCP} for short). A emph{recombination} is an operation that takes a $(k,s)$-BCP of a graph $G$ and produces another by merging two adjacent subgraphs and repartitioning them. Given two $k$-BCPs, $A$ and $B$, of $G$ and a slack $sgeq 0$, we wish to determine whether there exists a sequence of recombinations that transform $A$ into $B$ via $(k,s)$-BCPs. We obtain four results related to this problem: (1) When $s$ is unbounded, the transformation is always possible using at most $6(k-1)$ recombinations. (2) If $G$ is Hamiltonian, the transformation is possible using $O(kn)$ recombinations for any $s ge n/k$, and (3) we provide negative instances for $s leq n/(3k)$. (4) We show that the problem is PSPACE-complete when $k in O(n^{varepsilon})$ and $s in O(n^{1-varepsilon})$, for any constant $0 < varepsilon le 1$, even for restricted settings such as when $G$ is an edge-maximal planar graph or when $k=3$ and $G$ is planar.
Let $G$ be a graph such that each edge has its list of available colors, and assume that each list is a subset of the common set consisting of $k$ colors. Suppose that we are given two list edge-colorings $f_0$ and $f_r$ of $G$, and asked whether there exists a sequence of list edge-colorings of $G$ between $f_0$ and $f_r$ such that each list edge-coloring can be obtained from the previous one by changing a color assignment of exactly one edge. This problem is known to be PSPACE-complete for every integer $k ge 6$ and planar graphs of maximum degree three, but any complexity hardness was unknown for the non-list variant. In this paper, we first improve the known result by proving that, for every integer $k ge 4$, the problem remains PSPACE-complete even if an input graph is planar, bounded bandwidth, and of maximum degree three. We then give the first complexity hardness result for the non-list variant: for every integer $k ge 5$, we prove that the non-list variant is PSPACE-complete even if an input graph is planar, of bandwidth linear in $k$, and of maximum degree $k$.
We introduce the rendezvous game with adversaries. In this game, two players, {sl Facilitator} and {sl Disruptor}, play against each other on a graph. Facilitator has two agents, and Disruptor has a team of $k$ agents located in some vertices of the graph. They take turns in moving their agents to adjacent vertices (or staying). Facilitator wins if his agents meet in some vertex of the graph. The goal of Disruptor is to prevent the rendezvous of Facilitators agents. Our interest is to decide whether Facilitator can win. It appears that, in general, the problem is PSPACE-hard and, when parameterized by $k$, co-W[2]-hard. Moreover, even the games variant where we ask whether Facilitator can ensure the meeting of his agents within $tau$ steps is co-NP-complete already for $tau=2$. On the other hand, for chordal and $P_5$-free graphs, we prove that the problem is solvable in polynomial time. These algorithms exploit an interesting relation of the game and minimum vertex cuts in certain graph classes. Finally, we show that the problem is fixed-parameter tractable parameterized by both the graphs neighborhood diversity and $tau$.
The $k$-dimensional Weisfeiler-Leman algorithm ($k$-WL) is a fruitful approach to the Graph Isomorphism problem. 2-WL corresponds to the original algorithm suggested by Weisfeiler and Leman over 50 years ago. 1-WL is the classical color refinement routine. Indistinguishability by $k$-WL is an equivalence relation on graphs that is of fundamental importance for isomorphism testing, descriptive complexity theory, and graph similarity testing which is also of some relevance in artificial intelligence. Focusing on dimensions $k=1,2$, we investigate subgraph patterns whose counts are $k$-WL invariant, and whose occurrence is $k$-WL invariant. We achieve a complete description of all such patterns for dimension $k=1$ and considerably extend the previous results known for $k=2$.
A tessellation of a graph is a partition of its vertices into vertex disjoint cliques. A tessellation cover of a graph is a set of tessellations that covers all of its edges. The $t$-tessellability problem aims to decide whether there is a tessellation cover of the graph with $t$ tessellations. This problem is motivated by its applications to quantum walk models, in especial, the evolution operator of the staggered model is obtained from a graph tessellation cover. We establish upper bounds on the tessellation cover number given by the minimum between the chromatic index of the graph and the chromatic number of its clique graph and we show graph classes for which these bounds are tight. We prove $mathcal{NP}$-completeness for $t$-tessellability if the instance is restricted to planar graphs, chordal (2,1)-graphs, (1,2)-graphs, diamond-free graphs with diameter five, or for any fixed $t$ at least 3. On the other hand, we improve the complexity for 2-tessellability to a linear-time algorithm.