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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)
When quoting this document, please refer to the following
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ESA.2023.8
URN: urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-186618
URL: http://dagstuhl.sunsite.rwth-aachen.de/volltexte/2023/18661/
Akmal, Shyan ;
Wein, Nicole
A Local-To-Global Theorem for Congested Shortest Paths
Abstract
Amiri and Wargalla proved the following local-to-global theorem about shortest paths in directed acyclic graphs (DAGs): if G is a weighted DAG with the property that for each subset S of 3 nodes there is a shortest path containing every node in S, then there exists a pair (s,t) of nodes such that there is a shortest st-path containing every node in G. We extend this theorem to general graphs. For undirected graphs, we prove that the same theorem holds (up to a difference in the constant 3). For directed graphs, we provide a counterexample to the theorem (for any constant). However, we prove a roundtrip analogue of the theorem which guarantees there exists a pair (s,t) of nodes such that every node in G is contained in the union of a shortest st-path and a shortest ts-path.
The original local-to-global theorem for DAGs has an application to the k-Shortest Paths with Congestion c ((k,c)-SPC) problem. In this problem, we are given a weighted graph G, together with k node pairs (s_1,t_1),… ,(s_k,t_k), and a positive integer c ≤ k, and tasked with finding a collection of paths P_1,… , P_k such that each P_i is a shortest path from s_i to t_i, and every node in the graph is on at most c paths P_i, or reporting that no such collection of paths exists. When c = k, there are no congestion constraints, and the problem can be solved easily by running a shortest path algorithm for each pair (s_i,t_i) independently. At the other extreme, when c = 1, the (k,c)-SPC problem is equivalent to the k-Disjoint Shortest Paths (k-DSP) problem, where the collection of shortest paths must be node-disjoint. For fixed k, k-DSP is polynomial-time solvable on DAGs and undirected graphs. Amiri and Wargalla interpolated between these two extreme values of c, to obtain an algorithm for (k,c)-SPC on DAGs that runs in polynomial time when k-c is constant.
In the same way, we prove that (k,c)-SPC can be solved in polynomial time on undirected graphs whenever k-c is constant. For directed graphs, because of our counterexample to the original theorem statement, our roundtrip local-to-global result does not imply such an algorithm (k,c)-SPC. Even without an algorithmic application, our proof for directed graphs may be of broader interest because it characterizes intriguing structural properties of shortest paths in directed graphs.
BibTeX - Entry
@InProceedings{akmal_et_al:LIPIcs.ESA.2023.8,
author = {Akmal, Shyan and Wein, Nicole},
title = {{A Local-To-Global Theorem for Congested Shortest Paths}},
booktitle = {31st Annual European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA 2023)},
pages = {8:1--8:17},
series = {Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
ISBN = {978-3-95977-295-2},
ISSN = {1868-8969},
year = {2023},
volume = {274},
editor = {G{\o}rtz, Inge Li and Farach-Colton, Martin and Puglisi, Simon J. and Herman, Grzegorz},
publisher = {Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
address = {Dagstuhl, Germany},
URL = {https://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/volltexte/2023/18661},
URN = {urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-186618},
doi = {10.4230/LIPIcs.ESA.2023.8},
annote = {Keywords: disjoint paths, shortest paths, congestion, parameterized complexity}
}
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Keywords: |
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disjoint paths, shortest paths, congestion, parameterized complexity |
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Collection: |
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31st Annual European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA 2023) |
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Issue Date: |
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2023 |
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Date of publication: |
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30.08.2023 |
