We generalise the popular cops and robbers game to multi-layer graphs, where each cop and the robber are restricted to a single layer (or set of edges). We show that initial intuition about the best way to allocate cops to layers is not always correct, and prove that the multi-layer cop number is neither bounded from above nor below by any increasing function of the cop numbers of the individual layers. We determine that it is NP-hard to decide if $k$ cops are sufficient to catch the robber, even if every cop layer is a tree and a set of isolated vertices. However, we give a polynomial time algorithm to determine if $k$ cops can win when the robber layer is a tree. Additionally, we investigate a question of worst-case divisions of a simple graph into layers: given a simple graph $G$, what is the maximum number of cops required to catch a robber over all multi-layer graphs where each edge of $G$ is in at least one layer and all layers are connected? For cliques, suitably dense random graphs, and graphs of bounded treewidth, we determine this parameter up to multiplicative constants. Lastly we consider a multi-layer variant of Meyniel's conjecture, and show the existence of an infinite family of graphs whose multi-layer cop number is bounded from below by a constant times $n / \log n$, where $n$ is the number of vertices in the graph.

Reachability and other path-based measures on temporal graphs can be used to understand spread of infection, information, and people in modelled systems. Due to delays and errors in reporting, temporal graphs derived from data are unlikely to perfectly reflect reality, especially with respect to the precise times at which edges appear. To reflect this uncertainty, we consider a model in which some number $ζ$ of edge appearances may have their timestamps perturbed by $\pmδ$ for some $δ$. Within this model, we investigate temporal reachability and consider the problem of determining the maximum number of vertices any vertex can reach under these perturbations. We show that this problem is intractable in general but is efficiently solvable when $ζ$ is sufficiently large. We also give algorithms which solve this problem in several restricted settings. We complement this with some contrasting results concerning the complexity of related temporal eccentricity problems under perturbation.

A graph G is c-closed if every two vertices with at least c common neighbors are adjacent to each other. This definition is an abstraction of the triadic closure property exhibited by many real-world social networks, namely, friends of friends tend to be friends themselves. Social networks, however, are often temporal rather than static---the connections change over a period of time. And hence temporal graphs, rather than static graphs, are often better suited to model social networks. Motivated by this, we introduce a definition of temporal c-closed graphs, in which if two vertices u and v have at least c common neighbors during a short interval of time, then u and v are adjacent to each other around that time. Our pilot experiments show that several real-world temporal networks are c-closed for rather small values of c. We also study the computational problems of enumerating maximal cliques and other dense subgraphs in temporal c-closed graphs. A clique in a temporal graph is a subgraph that lasts for a certain period of time, during which every possible edge in the subgraph becomes active often enough; other dense subgraphs are defined similarly. We bound the number of such maximal dense subgraphs in a temporal c-closed graph that evolves slowly, and thus show that the corresponding enumeration problems admit efficient algorithms; by slow evolution, we mean that between consecutive time-steps, the local change in adjacencies remains small. Our work also adds to a growing body of literature on defining suitable structural parameters for temporal graphs that can be leveraged to design efficient algorithms.

Abstract This work investigates the parameterised complexity of counting temporal paths. The problem of counting temporal paths is mainly motivated by temporal betweenness computation. The betweenness centrality of a vertex v is an important centrality measure that quantifies how many optimal paths between pairs of other vertices visit v . Computing betweenness centrality in a temporal graph, in which the edge set may change over discrete timesteps, requires us to count temporal paths that are optimal with respect to some criterion. For several natural notions of optimality, including foremost or fastest temporal paths, this counting problem reduces to #Temporal Path , the problem of counting all temporal paths between a fixed pair of vertices; like the problems of counting foremost and fastest temporal paths, #Temporal Path is #P-hard in general. Motivated by the many applications of this intractable problem, we initiate a systematic study of the parameterised and approximation complexity of #Temporal Path . We show that the problem presumably does not admit an FPT-algorithm for the feedback vertex number of the static underlying graph, and that it is hard to approximate in general. On the positive side, we prove several exact and approximate FPT-algorithms for special cases.

Consider a query model of computation in which an n-vertex k-hypergraph can be accessed only via its independence oracle or via its colourful independence oracle, and each oracle query may incur a cost depending on the size of the query. Several recent results (Dell and Lapinskas, STOC 2018; Dell, Lapinskas, and Meeks, SODA 2020) give efficient algorithms to approximately count the hypergraph’s edges in the colourful setting. These algorithms immediately imply fine-grained reductions from approximate counting to decision, with overhead only log^Θ(k) n over the running time n^α of the original decision algorithm, for many well-studied problems including k-Orthogonal Vectors, k-SUM, subgraph isomorphism problems including k-Clique and colourful-H, graph motifs, and k-variable first-order model checking. We explore the limits of what is achievable in this setting, obtaining unconditional lower bounds on the oracle cost of algorithms to approximately count the hypergraph’s edges in both the colourful and uncoloured settings. In both settings, we also obtain algorithms which essentially match these lower bounds; in the colourful setting, this requires significant changes to the algorithm of Dell, Lapinskas, and Meeks (SODA 2020) and reduces the total overhead to log^{Θ(k-α)}n. Our lower bound for the uncoloured setting shows that there is no fine-grained reduction from approximate counting to the corresponding uncoloured decision problem (except in the case α ≥ k-1): without an algorithm for the colourful decision problem, we cannot hope to avoid the much larger overhead of roughly n^{(k-α)²/4}. The uncoloured setting has previously been studied for the special case k = 2 (Peled, Ramamoorthy, Rashtchian, Sinha, ITCS 2018; Chen, Levi, and Waingarten, SODA 2020), and our work generalises the existing algorithms and lower bounds for this special case to k > 2 and to oracles with cost.

Temporal graphs provide a useful model for many real-world networks. Unfortunately, the majority of algorithmic problems we might consider on such graphs are intractable. There has been recent progress in defining structural parameters which describe tractable cases by simultaneously restricting the underlying structure and the times at which edges appear in the graph. These all rely on the temporal graph being sparse in some sense. We introduce temporal analogues of three increasingly restrictive static graph parameters - cliquewidth, modular-width and neighbourhood diversity - which take small values for highly structured temporal graphs, even if a large number of edges are active at each timestep. The computational problems solvable efficiently when the temporal cliquewidth of the input graph is bounded form a subset of those solvable efficiently when the temporal modular-width is bounded, which is in turn a subset of problems efficiently solvable when the temporal neighbourhood diversity is bounded. By considering specific temporal graph problems, we demonstrate that (up to standard complexity theoretic assumptions) these inclusions are strict.

Abstract Understanding spatial correlation is vital in many fields including epidemiology and social science. Lee et al. (Stat Comput 31(4):51, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11222-021-10025-7 ) recently demonstrated that improved inference for areal unit count data can be achieved by carrying out modifications to a graph representing spatial correlations; specifically, they delete edges of the planar graph derived from border-sharing between geographic regions in order to maximise a specific objective function. In this paper, we address the computational complexity of the associated graph optimisation problem. We demonstrate that this optimisation problem is NP-hard; we further show intractability for two simpler variants of the problem. We follow these results with two parameterised algorithms that exactly solve the problem. The first is parameterised by both treewidth and maximum degree, while the second is parameterised by the maximum number of edges that can be removed and is also restricted to settings where the input graph has maximum degree three. Both of these algorithms solve not only the decision problem, but also enumerate all solutions with polynomial time precalculation, delay, and postcalculation time in respective restricted settings. For this problem, efficient enumeration allows the uncertainty in the spatial correlation to be utilised in the modelling. The first enumeration algorithm utilises dynamic programming on a tree decomposition of the input graph, and has polynomial time precalculation and linear delay if both the treewidth and maximum degree are bounded. The second algorithm is restricted to problem instances with maximum degree three, as may arise from triangulations of planar surfaces, but can output all solutions with FPT precalculation time and linear delay when the maximum number of edges that can be removed is taken as the parameter.

The NP-complete graph problem Cluster Editing seeks to transform a static graph into a disjoint union of cliques by making the fewest possible edits to the edges. We introduce a natural interpretation of this problem in temporal graphs, whose edge sets change over time. This problem is NP-complete even when restricted to temporal graphs whose underlying graph is a path, but we obtain two polynomial-time algorithms for restricted cases. In the static setting, it is well-known that a graph is a disjoint union of cliques if and only if it contains no induced copy of P3; we demonstrate that no general characterisation involving sets of at most four vertices can exist in the temporal setting, but obtain a complete characterisation involving forbidden configurations on at most five vertices. This characterisation gives rise to an FPT algorithm parameterised simultaneously by the permitted number of modifications and the lifetime of the temporal graph.

Abstract. We study the problems of counting copies and induced copies of a small pattern graph [Formula: see text] in a large host graph [Formula: see text]. Recent work fully classified the complexity of those problems according to structural restrictions on the patterns [Formula: see text]. In this work, we address the more challenging task of analyzing the complexity for restricted patterns and restricted hosts. Specifically, we ask which families of allowed patterns and hosts imply fixed-parameter tractability, i.e., the existence of an algorithm running in time [Formula: see text] for some computable function [Formula: see text]. Our main results present exhaustive and explicit complexity classifications for families that satisfy natural closure properties. Among others, we identify the problems of counting small matchings and independent sets in subgraph-closed graph classes [Formula: see text] as our central objects of study and establish the following crisp dichotomies as consequences of the exponential time hypothesis: (1) Counting [Formula: see text]-matchings in a graph [Formula: see text] is fixed-parameter tractable if and only if [Formula: see text] is nowhere dense. (2) Counting [Formula: see text]-independent sets in a graph [Formula: see text] is fixed-parameter tractable if and only if [Formula: see text] is nowhere dense. Moreover, we obtain almost tight conditional lower bounds if [Formula: see text] is somewhere dense, i.e., not nowhere dense. These base cases of our classifications subsume a wide variety of previous results on the matching and independent set problem, such as counting [Formula: see text]-matchings in bipartite graphs (Curticapean, Marx; FOCS 14), in [Formula: see text]-colorable graphs (Roth, Wellnitz; SODA 20), and in degenerate graphs (Bressan, Roth; FOCS 21), as well as counting [Formula: see text]-independent sets in bipartite graphs (Curticapean et al.; Algorithmica 19). At the same time, our proofs are much simpler: using structural characterizations of somewhere dense graphs, we show that a colorful version of a recent breakthrough technique for analyzing pattern counting problems (Curticapean, Dell, Marx; STOC 17) applies to any subgraph-closed somewhere dense class of graphs, yielding a unified view of our current understanding of the complexity of subgraph counting.

We study the problems of counting copies and induced copies of a small pattern graph H in a large host graph G. Recent work fully classified the complexity of those problems according to structural restrictions on the patterns H. In this work, we address the more challenging task of analysing the complexity for restricted patterns and restricted hosts. Specifically we ask which families of allowed patterns and hosts imply fixed-parameter tractability, i.e., the existence of an algorithm running in time f(H)⋅|G|^O(1) for some computable function f. Our main results present exhaustive and explicit complexity classifications for families that satisfy natural closure properties. Among others, we identify the problems of counting small matchings and independent sets in subgraph-closed graph classes 𝒢 as our central objects of study and establish the following crisp dichotomies as consequences of the Exponential Time Hypothesis: - Counting k-matchings in a graph G ∈ 𝒢 is fixed-parameter tractable if and only if 𝒢 is nowhere dense. - Counting k-independent sets in a graph G ∈ 𝒢 is fixed-parameter tractable if and only if 𝒢 is nowhere dense. Moreover, we obtain almost tight conditional lower bounds if 𝒢 is somewhere dense, i.e., not nowhere dense. These base cases of our classifications subsume a wide variety of previous results on the matching and independent set problem, such as counting k-matchings in bipartite graphs (Curticapean, Marx; FOCS 14), in F-colourable graphs (Roth, Wellnitz; SODA 20), and in degenerate graphs (Bressan, Roth; FOCS 21), as well as counting k-independent sets in bipartite graphs (Curticapean et al.; Algorithmica 19). At the same time our proofs are much simpler: using structural characterisations of somewhere dense graphs, we show that a colourful version of a recent breakthrough technique for analysing pattern counting problems (Curticapean, Dell, Marx; STOC 17) applies to any subgraph-closed somewhere dense class of graphs, yielding a unified view of our current understanding of the complexity of subgraph counting.

The betweenness centrality of a vertex v is an important centrality measure that quantifies how many optimal paths between pairs of other vertices visit v. Computing betweenness centrality in a temporal graph, in which the edge set may change over discrete timesteps, requires us to count temporal paths that are optimal with respect to some criterion. For several natural notions of optimality, including foremost or fastest temporal paths, this counting problem reduces to #TEMPORAL PATH, the problem of counting all temporal paths between a fixed pair of vertices; like the problems of counting foremost and fastest temporal paths, #TEMPORAL PATH is #P-hard in general. Motivated by the many applications of this intractable problem, we initiate a systematic study of the parameterised and approximation complexity of #TEMPORAL PATH. We show that the problem presumably does not admit an FPT-algorithm for the feedback vertex number of the static underlying graph, and that it is hard to approximate in general. On the positive side, we prove several exact and approximate FPT-algorithms for special cases.

Abstract We introduce a natural temporal analogue of Eulerian circuits and prove that, in contrast to the static case, it is $${\textsc {NP}}$$ NP -hard to determine whether a given temporal graph is temporally Eulerian even if strong restrictions are placed on the structure of the underlying graph and each edge is active at only three times. However, we do obtain an $${\textsc {FPT}}$$ FPT -algorithm with respect to a new parameter called interval-membership-width which restricts the times assigned to different edges; we believe that this parameter will be of independent interest for other temporal graph problems. Our techniques also allow us to resolve two open questions of Akrida, Mertzios and Spirakis [CIAC 2019] concerning a related problem of exploring temporal stars.

In this paper, we design efficient algorithms to approximately count the number of edges of a given $k$-hypergraph, and to sample an approximately uniform random edge. The hypergraph is not given explicitly and can be accessed only through its colorful independence oracle: The colorful independence oracle returns yes or no depending on whether a given subset of the vertices contains an edge that is colorful with respect to a given vertex-coloring. Our results extend and/or strengthen recent results in the graph oracle literature due to Beame et al. [ ACM Trans. Algorithms, 16 (2020), 52], Dell and Lapinskas [ Proceedings of STOC, ACM, 2018, pp. 281--288], and Bhattacharya et al. [ Proceedings of ISAAC, 2019]. Our results have consequences for approximate counting/sampling: We can turn certain kinds of decision algorithms into approximate counting/sampling algorithms without causing much overhead in the running time. We apply this approximate counting/sampling-to-decision reduction to key problems in fine-grained complexity (such as $k$-SUM, $k$-OV, and weighted $k$-Clique) and parameterized complexity (such as induced subgraphs of size $k$ or weight-$k$ solutions to constraint satisfaction problems).

Spreading processes on graphs are a natural model for a wide variety of real-world phenomena, including information spread over social networks and biological diseases spreading over contact networks. Often, the networks over which these processes spread are dynamic in nature, and can be modelled with temporal graphs. Here, we study the problem of deleting edges from a given temporal graph in order to reduce the number of vertices (temporally) reachable from a given starting point. This could be used to control the spread of a disease, rumour, etc. in a temporal graph. In particular, our aim is to find a temporal subgraph in which a process starting at any single vertex can be transferred to only a limited number of other vertices using a temporally-feasible path. We introduce a natural edge-deletion problem for temporal graphs and provide positive and negative results on its computational complexity and approximability.

Temporal graphs (in which edges are active at specified times) are of particular relevance for spreading processes on graphs, e.g. the spread of disease or dissemination of information. Motivated by real-world applications, modification of static graphs to control this spread has proven a rich topic for previous research. Here, we introduce a new type of modification for temporal graphs: the number of active times for each edge is fixed, but we can change the relative order in which (sets of) edges are active. We investigate the problem of determining an ordering of edges that minimises the maximum number of vertices reachable from any single starting vertex; epidemiologically, this corresponds to the worst-case number of vertices infected in a single disease outbreak. We study two versions of this problem, both of which we show to be NP-hard, and identify cases in which the problem can be solved or approximated efficiently.

In this paper, we prove “black box” results for turning algorithms which decide whether or not a witness exists into algorithms to approximately count the number of witnesses, or to sample from the set of witnesses approximately uniformly, with essentially the same running time. We do so by extending the framework of Dell and Lapinskas (STOC 2018), which covers decision problems that can be expressed as edge detection in bipartite graphs given limited oracle access; our framework covers problems which can be expressed as edge detection in arbitrary k-hypergraphs given limited oracle access. (Simulating this oracle generally corresponds to invoking a decision algorithm.) This includes many key problems in both the fine-grained setting (such as k-SUM, k-OV and weighted k-Clique) and the parameterised setting (such as induced subgraphs of size k or weight-k solutions to CSPs). From an algorithmic standpoint, our results will make the development of new approximate counting algorithms substantially easier; indeed, it already yields a new state-of-the-art algorithm for approximately counting graph motifs, improving on Jerrum and Meeks (JCSS 2015) unless the input graph is very dense and the desired motif very small. Our k-hypergraph reduction framework generalises and strengthens results in the graph oracle literature due to Beame et al. (ITCS 2018) and Bhattacharya et al. (CoRR abs/1808.00691).

Abstract The maximum modularity of a graph is a parameter widely used to describe the level of clustering or community structure in a network. Determining the maximum modularity of a graph is known to be $$\textsf {NP}$$ NP -complete in general, and in practice a range of heuristics are used to construct partitions of the vertex-set which give lower bounds on the maximum modularity but without any guarantee on how close these bounds are to the true maximum. In this paper we investigate the parameterised complexity of determining the maximum modularity with respect to various standard structural parameterisations of the input graph G. We show that the problem belongs to $$\textsf {FPT}$$ FPT when parameterised by the size of a minimum vertex cover for G, and is solvable in polynomial time whenever the treewidth or max leaf number of G is bounded by some fixed constant; we also obtain an FPT algorithm, parameterised by treewidth, to compute any constant-factor approximation to the maximum modularity. On the other hand we show that the problem is W[1]-hard (and hence unlikely to admit an FPT algorithm) when parameterised simultaneously by pathwidth and the size of a minimum feedback vertex set.

We devise an enumeration method for inclusion-wise minimal hitting sets in hypergraphs. It has delay O(mk* +1 · n2) and uses linear space. Hereby, n is the number of vertices, m the number of hyperedges, and k* the rank of the transversal hypergraph. In particular, on classes of hypergraphs for which the cardinality k* of the largest minimal hitting set is bounded, the delay is polynomial. The algorithm solves the extension problem for minimal hitting sets as a subroutine. We show that the extension problem is W[3]-complete when parameterised by the cardinality of the set which is to be extended. For the subroutine, we give an algorithm that is optimal under the exponential time hypothesis. Despite these lower bounds, we provide empirical evidence showing that the enumeration outperforms the theoretical worst-case guarantee on hypergraphs arising in the profiling of relational databases, namely, in the detection of unique column combinations.

Many combinatorial problems involve determining whether a universe of n elements contains a witness consisting of k elements which have some specified property. In this paper we investigate the relationship between the decision and enumeration versions of such problems: efficient methods are known for transforming a decision algorithm into a search procedure that finds a single witness, but even finding a second witness is not so straightforward in general. We show that, if the decision version of the problem can be solved in time $$f(k) \cdot poly(n)$$ , there is a randomised algorithm which enumerates all witnesses in time $$e^{k + o(k)} \cdot f(k) \cdot poly(n) \cdot N$$ , where N is the total number of witnesses. If the decision version of the problem is solved by a randomised algorithm which may return false negatives, then the same method allows us to output a list of witnesses in which any given witness will be included with high probability. The enumeration algorithm also gives rise to an efficient algorithm to count the total number of witnesses when this number is small.

Given a linear equation L , a set A of integers is L -free if A does not contain any ‘non-trivial’ solutions to L . This notion incorporates many central topics in combinatorial number theory such as sum-free and progression-free sets. In this paper we initiate the study of (parameterised) complexity questions involving L -free sets of integers. The main questions we consider involve deciding whether a finite set of integers A has an L -free subset of a given size, and counting all such L -free subsets. We also raise a number of open problems.

Parameterised subgraph counting problems are the most thoroughly studied topic in the theory of parameterised counting, and there has been significant recent progress in this area. Many of the existing tractability results for parameterised problems which involve finding or counting subgraphs with particular properties rely on bounding the treewidth of these subgraphs in some sense; here, we prove a number of hardness results for the situation in which this bounded treewidth condition does not hold, resulting in dichotomies for some special cases of the general subgraph counting problem. The paper also gives a thorough survey of known results on this subject and the methods used, as well as discussing the relationships both between multicolour and uncoloured versions of subgraph counting problems, and between exact counting, approximate counting and the corresponding decision problems.