License: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license (CC BY 3.0)
When quoting this document, please refer to the following
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.SoCG.2019.27
URN: urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-104311
URL: http://dagstuhl.sunsite.rwth-aachen.de/volltexte/2019/10431/
Go to the corresponding LIPIcs Volume Portal


Cohen-Addad, Vincent ; Colin de Verdière, Éric ; Marx, Dániel ; de Mesmay, Arnaud

Almost Tight Lower Bounds for Hard Cutting Problems in Embedded Graphs

pdf-format:
LIPIcs-SoCG-2019-27.pdf (0.6 MB)


Abstract

We prove essentially tight lower bounds, conditionally to the Exponential Time Hypothesis, for two fundamental but seemingly very different cutting problems on surface-embedded graphs: the Shortest Cut Graph problem and the Multiway Cut problem.
A cut graph of a graph G embedded on a surface S is a subgraph of G whose removal from S leaves a disk. We consider the problem of deciding whether an unweighted graph embedded on a surface of genus g has a cut graph of length at most a given value. We prove a time lower bound for this problem of n^{Omega(g/log g)} conditionally to ETH. In other words, the first n^{O(g)}-time algorithm by Erickson and Har-Peled [SoCG 2002, Discr. Comput. Geom. 2004] is essentially optimal. We also prove that the problem is W[1]-hard when parameterized by the genus, answering a 17-year old question of these authors.
A multiway cut of an undirected graph G with t distinguished vertices, called terminals, is a set of edges whose removal disconnects all pairs of terminals. We consider the problem of deciding whether an unweighted graph G has a multiway cut of weight at most a given value. We prove a time lower bound for this problem of n^{Omega(sqrt{gt + g^2}/log(gt))}, conditionally to ETH, for any choice of the genus g >=0 of the graph and the number of terminals t >=4. In other words, the algorithm by the second author [Algorithmica 2017] (for the more general multicut problem) is essentially optimal; this extends the lower bound by the third author [ICALP 2012] (for the planar case).
Reductions to planar problems usually involve a grid-like structure. The main novel idea for our results is to understand what structures instead of grids are needed if we want to exploit optimally a certain value g of the genus.

BibTeX - Entry

@InProceedings{cohenaddad_et_al:LIPIcs:2019:10431,
  author =	{Vincent Cohen-Addad and {\'E}ric Colin de Verdi{\`e}re and D{\'a}niel Marx and Arnaud de Mesmay},
  title =	{{Almost Tight Lower Bounds for Hard Cutting Problems in Embedded Graphs}},
  booktitle =	{35th International Symposium on Computational Geometry (SoCG 2019)},
  pages =	{27:1--27:16},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-104-7},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2019},
  volume =	{129},
  editor =	{Gill Barequet and Yusu Wang},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl--Leibniz-Zentrum fuer Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/volltexte/2019/10431},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-104311},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.SoCG.2019.27},
  annote =	{Keywords: Cut graph, Multiway cut, Surface, Lower bound, Parameterized Complexity, Exponential Time Hypothesis}
}

Keywords: Cut graph, Multiway cut, Surface, Lower bound, Parameterized Complexity, Exponential Time Hypothesis
Collection: 35th International Symposium on Computational Geometry (SoCG 2019)
Issue Date: 2019
Date of publication: 11.06.2019


DROPS-Home | Fulltext Search | Imprint | Privacy Published by LZI