No Arabic abstract
We study the problem of online graph exploration on undirected graphs, where a searcher has to visit every vertex and return to the origin. Once a new vertex is visited, the searcher learns of all neighboring vertices and the connecting edge weights. The goal such an exploration is to minimize its total cost, where each edge traversal incurs a cost of the corresponding edge weight. We investigate the problem on tadpole graphs (also known as dragons, kites), which consist of a cycle with an attached path. Miyazaki et al. (The online graph exploration problem on restricted graphs, IEICE Transactions 92-D (9), 2009) showed that every online algorithm on these graphs must have a competitive ratio of 2-epsilon, but did not provide upper bounds for non-unit edge weights. We show via amortized analysis that a greedy approach yields a matching competitive ratio of 2 on tadpole graphs, for arbitrary non-negative edge weights.
Identifying the connected components of a graph, apart from being a fundamental problem with countless applications, is a key primitive for many other algorithms. In this paper, we consider this problem in parallel settings. Particularly, we focus on the Massively Parallel Computations (MPC) model, which is the standard theoretical model for modern parallel frameworks such as MapReduce, Hadoop, or Spark. We consider the truly sublinear regime of MPC for graph problems where the space per machine is $n^delta$ for some desirably small constant $delta in (0, 1)$. We present an algorithm that for graphs with diameter $D$ in the wide range $[log^{epsilon} n, n]$, takes $O(log D)$ rounds to identify the connected components and takes $O(log log n)$ rounds for all other graphs. The algorithm is randomized, succeeds with high probability, does not require prior knowledge of $D$, and uses an optimal total space of $O(m)$. We complement this by showing a conditional lower-bound based on the widely believed TwoCycle conjecture that $Omega(log D)$ rounds are indeed necessary in this setting. Studying parallel connectivity algorithms received a resurgence of interest after the pioneering work of Andoni et al. [FOCS 2018] who presented an algorithm with $O(log D cdot log log n)$ round-complexity. Our algorithm improves this result for the whole range of values of $D$ and almost settles the problem due to the conditional lower-bound. Additionally, we show that with minimal adjustments, our algorithm can also be implemented in a variant of the (CRCW) PRAM in asymptotically the same number of rounds.
We consider the following online optimization problem. We are given a graph $G$ and each vertex of the graph is assigned to one of $ell$ servers, where servers have capacity $k$ and we assume that the graph has $ell cdot k$ vertices. Initially, $G$ does not contain any edges and then the edges of $G$ are revealed one-by-one. The goal is to design an online algorithm $operatorname{ONL}$, which always places the connected components induced by the revealed edges on the same server and never exceeds the server capacities by more than $varepsilon k$ for constant $varepsilon>0$. Whenever $operatorname{ONL}$ learns about a new edge, the algorithm is allowed to move vertices from one server to another. Its objective is to minimize the number of vertex moves. More specifically, $operatorname{ONL}$ should minimize the competitive ratio: the total cost $operatorname{ONL}$ incurs compared to an optimal offline algorithm $operatorname{OPT}$. Our main contribution is a polynomial-time randomized algorithm, that is asymptotically optimal: we derive an upper bound of $O(log ell + log k)$ on its competitive ratio and show that no randomized online algorithm can achieve a competitive ratio of less than $Omega(log ell + log k)$. We also settle the open problem of the achievable competitive ratio by deterministic online algorithms, by deriving a competitive ratio of $Theta(ell lg k)$; to this end, we present an improved lower bound as well as a deterministic polynomial-time online algorithm. Our algorithms rely on a novel technique which combines efficient integer programming with a combinatorial approach for maintaining ILP solutions. We believe this technique is of independent interest and will find further applications in the future.
Online graph problems are considered in models where the irrevocability requirement is relaxed. Motivated by practical examples where, for example, there is a cost associated with building a facility and no extra cost associated with doing it later, we consider the Late Accept model, where a request can be accepted at a later point, but any acceptance is irrevocable. Similarly, we also consider a Late Reject model, where an accepted request can later be rejected, but any rejection is irrevocable (this is sometimes called preemption). Finally, we consider the Late Accept/Reject model, where late accepts and rejects are both allowed, but any late reject is irrevocable. For Independent Set, the Late Accept/Reject model is necessary to obtain a constant competitive ratio, but for Vertex Cover the Late Accept model is sufficient and for Minimum Spanning Forest the Late Reject model is sufficient. The Matching problem has a competitive ratio of 2, but in the Late Accept/Reject model, its competitive ratio is 3/2.
We study the space complexity of sketching cuts and Laplacian quadratic forms of graphs. We show that any data structure which approximately stores the sizes of all cuts in an undirected graph on $n$ vertices up to a $1+epsilon$ error must use $Omega(nlog n/epsilon^2)$ bits of space in the worst case, improving the $Omega(n/epsilon^2)$ bound of Andoni et al. and matching the best known upper bound achieved by spectral sparsifiers. Our proof is based on a rigidity phenomenon for cut (and spectral) approximation which may be of independent interest: any two $d-$regular graphs which approximate each others cuts significantly better than a random graph approximates the complete graph must overlap in a constant fraction of their edges.
In this paper we present a deterministic CONGEST algorithm to compute an $O(kDelta)$-vertex coloring in $O(Delta/k)+log^* n$ rounds, where $Delta$ is the maximum degree of the network graph and $1leq kleq O(Delta)$ can be freely chosen. The algorithm is extremely simple: Each node locally computes a sequence of colors and then it tries colors from the sequence in batches of size $k$. Our algorithm subsumes many important results in the history of distributed graph coloring as special cases, including Linials color reduction [Linial, FOCS87], the celebrated locally iterative algorithm from [Barenboim, Elkin, Goldenberg, PODC18], and various algorithms to compute defective and arbdefective colorings. Our algorithm can smoothly scale between these and also simplifies the state of the art $(Delta+1)$-coloring algorithm. At the cost of losing the full algorithms simplicity we also provide a $O(kDelta)$-coloring algorithm in $O(sqrt{Delta/k})+log^* n$ rounds. We also provide improved deterministic algorithms for ruling sets, and, additionally, we provide a tight characterization for one-round color reduction algorithms.