Sensitivity analysis for shortest path problems and maximum capacity path problems in undirected graphs

This paper addresses sensitivity analysis questions concerning the shortest path problem and the maximum capacity path problem in an undirected network. For both problems, we determine the maximum and minimum weights that each edge can have so that a given path remains optimal. For both problems, we show how to determine these maximum and minimum values for all edges in O(m + K log K) time, where m is the number of edges in the network, and K is the number of edges on the given optimal path.     

On the K shortest path trees problem

We address the problem of finding the K best path trees connecting a source node with any other non-source node in a directed network with arbitrary lengths. The main result in this paper is the proof that the kth shortest path tree is adjacent to at least one of the previous (k-1) shortest path trees. Consequently, we design an O(f(n,m,C_max)+Km) time and O(K+m) space algorithm to determine the K shortest path trees, in a directed network with n nodes, m arcs and maximum absolute length C_max, where O(f(n,m,C_max)) is the best time needed to solve the shortest simple paths connecting a source node with any other non-source node.     

Semirings and path spaces

This paper develops a unified algebraic theory for a class of path problems such as that of finding the shortest or, more generally, the k shortest paths in a network; the enumeration of elemementary or simple paths in a graph. It differs from most earlier work in that the algebraic structure appended to a graph or a network of a path problem is not axiomatically given as a starting point of the theory, but is derived from a novel concept called a “path space”. This concept is shown to provide a coherent framework for the analysis of path problems, and hence the development of algebraic methods for solving them.     

Scott modules in finite groups with cyclic Sylow p-subgroups

We present a simple method for determining Scott modules of finite groups using just the Brauer tree of the principal block and the values of ordinary characters at non-identity p-elements. Previously, determining Scott modules often involved long calculations. The method is applicable to the case where finite groups have cyclic Sylow p-subgroups. The structure of a Scott module is closely related to the length of the shortest path from the vertex labeled by the trivial ordinary character to the exceptional vertex in the Brauer tree. We classify the structures of the Scott modules and the ordinary characters they afford, by the length of the associated path in the Brauer tree.     

Enumerating K best paths in length order in DAGs

We address the problem of finding the K best paths connecting a given pair of nodes in a directed acyclic graph (DAG) with arbitrary lengths. One of the main results in this paper is the proof that a tree representing the kth shortest path is obtained by an arc exchange in one of the previous (k − 1) trees (each of which contains a previous best path). An O(m + K(n + log K)) time and O(K + m) space algorithm is designed to explicitly determine the K shortest paths in a DAG with n nodes and m arcs. The algorithm runs in O(m + Kn) time using O(K + m) space in DAGs with integer length arcs. Empirical results confirming the superior performance of the algorithm to others found in the literature for randomly generated graphs are reported.     

The shortest path problem with forbidden paths

We consider a variant of the constrained shortest path problem, where the constraints come from a set of forbidden paths (arc sequences) that cannot be part of any feasible solution. Two solution approaches are proposed for this variant. The first uses Aho and Corasick's keyword matching algorithm to filter paths produced by a k-shortest paths algorithm. The second generalizes Martins' deviation path approach for the k-shortest paths problem by merging the original graph with a state graph derived from Aho and Corasick's algorithm. Like Martins' approach, the second method amounts to a polynomial reduction of the shortest path problem with forbidden paths to a classic shortest path problem. Its significant advantage over the first approach is that it allows considering forbidden paths in more general shortest path problems such as the shortest path problem with resource constraints.     

Pendant-medians

The median of a network is any point in the network that minimizes the sum of the shortest distances from it to each vertex. Let's omit from this sum the distance to any vertex that is intermediate on the shortest path from the median to another vertex. In other words, include in the sum only the pendant vertices of the shortest distance spanning free. A pendant-median is any point in the network that minimizes this revised sum of the shortest distances. A pendant-median models facility locations in which customers can be served without penalty along the route to other, more distant customers.This paper presents a simple algorithm to locate a pendant-median of a tree network and presents several results for general networks.     

Representing edge intersection graphs of paths on degree 4 trees

Let P be a collection of nontrivial simple paths on a host tree T. The edge intersection graph of P, denoted by EPT(P), has vertex set that corresponds to the members of P, and two vertices are joined by an edge if and only if the corresponding members of P share at least one common edge in T. An undirected graph G is called an edge intersection graph of paths in a tree if G=EPT(P) for some P and T. The EPT graphs are useful in network applications. Scheduling undirected calls in a tree network or assigning wavelengths to virtual connections in an optical tree network are equivalent to coloring its EPT graph.An undirected graph G is chordal if every cycle in G of length greater than 3 possesses a chord. Chordal graphs correspond to vertex intersection graphs of subtrees on a tree. An undirected graph G is weakly chordal if every cycle of length greater than 4 in G and in its complement possesses a chord. It is known that the EPT graphs restricted to host trees of vertex degree 3 are precisely the chordal EPT graphs. We prove a new analogous result that weakly chordal EPT graphs are precisely the EPT graphs with host tree restricted to degree 4. Moreover, this provides an algorithm to reduce a given EPT representation of a weakly chordal EPT graph to an EPT representation on a degree 4 tree. Finally, we raise a number of intriguing open questions regarding related families of graphs.     

Paths, trees and matchings under disjunctive constraints

We study the minimum spanning tree problem, the maximum matching problem and the shortest path problem subject to binary disjunctive constraints: A negative disjunctive constraint states that a certain pair of edges cannot be contained simultaneously in a feasible solution. It is convenient to represent these negative disjunctive constraints in terms of a so-called conflict graph whose vertices correspond to the edges of the underlying graph, and whose edges encode the constraints.We prove that the minimum spanning tree problem is strongly NP-hard, even if every connected component of the conflict graph is a path of length two. On the positive side, this problem is polynomially solvable if every connected component is a single edge (that is, a path of length one). The maximum matching problem is NP-hard for conflict graphs where every connected component is a single edge.Furthermore we will also investigate these graph problems under positive disjunctive constraints: In this setting for certain pairs of edges, a feasible solution must contain at least one edge from every pair. We establish a number of complexity results for these variants including APX-hardness for the shortest path problem.     

Planar rectilinear shortest path computation using corridors

The rectilinear shortest path problem can be stated as follows: given a set of m non-intersecting simple polygonal obstacles in the plane, find a shortest L₁-metric (rectilinear) path from a point s to a point t that avoids all the obstacles. The path can touch an obstacle but does not cross it. This paper presents an algorithm with time complexity O(n+m(lgn)^3/2), which is close to the known lower bound of Ω(n+mlgm) for finding such a path. Here, n is the number of vertices of all the obstacles together.     

Locally strong endomorphisms of paths

We determine the number of locally strong endomorphisms of directed and undirected paths—direction here is in the sense of a bipartite graph from one partition set to the other. This is done by the investigation of congruence classes, leading to the concept of a complete folding, which is used to characterize locally strong endomorphisms of paths. A congruence belongs to a locally strong endomorphism if and only if the number l of congruence classes divides the length of the original path and the points of the path are folded completely into the l classes, starting from 0 to l and then back to 0, then again back to l and so on. It turns out that for paths locally strong endomorphisms form a monoid if and only if the length of the path is prime or equal to 4 in the undirected case and in the directed case also if the length is 8. Finally some algebraic properties of these monoids are described.     

A recognition algorithm for the intersection graphs of paths in trees

Let F be a finite family of non-empty sets. An undirected graph G is an intersection graph for F if there is a one-to-one correspondence between the vertices of G and the sets of F such that two sets have a non-empty intersection exactly when the corresponding vertices are adjacent in G. If this is the case then F is said to be an intersection model for the graph G. If F is a family of paths within a tree T, then G is called a path graph. This paper proves a characterization for the path graphs and then gives a polynomial time algorithm for their recognition. If G is a path graph the algorithm constructs a path intersection model for G.     

On P-quasigroups and decompositions of complete undirected graphs

In [2], A. Kotzig has introduced the concepts of P-groupoid and P-quasigroup and has shown how these concepts are related to the decomposition of a complete undirected graph into disjoint closed paths. To each closed path of the graph associated with a given P-quasigroup Q there corresponds a cyclic partial transversal in the Latin square L which is defined by the multiplication table of Q. In this paper, it is shown that cyclic transversals are connected with Hamiltonian decompositions of complete undirected graphs having an even number of vertices and a connection between the order of a particular type of P-quasigroup and the length of its cyclic partial transversals is established. An indirect connection with the work of Yap [4] is established via the concept of isotopy.     

Finding K shortest looping paths with waiting time in a time–window network

A time-constrained shortest path problem is a shortest path problem including time constraints that are commonly modeled by the form of time windows. Finding K shortest paths are suitable for the problem associated with constraints that are difficult to define or optimize simultaneously. Depending on the types of constraints, these K paths are generally classified into either simple paths or looping paths. In the presence of time–window constraints, waiting time occurs but is largely ignored. Given a network with such constraints, the contribution of this paper is to develop a polynomial time algorithm that finds the first K shortest looping paths including waiting time. The time complexity of the algorithm is O(rK²|V₁|³), where r is the number of different windows of a node and |V₁| is the number of nodes in the original network.     

The intersection graphs of subtrees in trees are exactly the chordal graphs

The intersection graph of a family of subtrees in an undirected tree is called a subtree graph. A graph is called chordal if every simple circuit with more than three vertices has an edge connecting two non-consecutive vertices. In this paper, we prove that, for a graph G, the following conditions are equivalent: (i) G is a chordal graph; (ii) G is a subtree graph; (iii) G is a proper subtree graph.Consider a chordal graph G. We give an efficient algorithm for constructing a representation of G by a family of subtrees in a tree.     

On the fastest moving off from a vertex in directed regular graphs

Let Γ be a directed regular locally finite graph, and let $\bar \Gamma $ be the undirected graph obtained by forgetting the orientation of Γ. Let x be a vertex of Γ and let n be a nonnegative integer. We study the length of the shortest directed path in Γ starting at x and ending outside of the ball of radius n centered at x in $\bar \Gamma $ .     

Minimizing and maximizing the diameter in orientations of graphs

For a graph G, letG′(G″) denote an orientation ofG having maximum (minimum respectively) finite diameter. We show that the length of the longest path in any 2-edge connected (undirected) graph G is precisely diam(G′). LetK(m _l ,m ₂,...,m _n) be the completen-partite graph with parts of cardinalitiesm ₁ m₂, …,m _n . We prove that ifm ₁ = m₂ = … =m _n = m,n ≥ 3, then diam(K″(m₁,m₂,...,m_n)) = 2, unless m=1 andn = 4.     

Undirected forest constraints

We present two constraints that partition the vertices of an undirected n-vertex, m-edge graph \(\mathcal {G}=( \mathcal {V}, \mathcal {E})\) into a set of vertex-disjoint trees. The first is the resource-forest constraint, where we assume that a subset \(\mathcal {R}\subseteq \mathcal {V}\) of the vertices are resource vertices. The constraint specifies that each tree in the forest must contain at least one resource vertex. This is the natural undirected counterpart of the tree constraint (Beldiceanu et al., CP-AI-OR’05, Springer, Berlin, 2005), which partitions a directed graph into a forest of directed trees where only certain vertices can be tree roots. We describe a hybrid-consistency algorithm that runs in \(\mathop {\mathcal {O}}(m+n)\) time for the resource-forest constraint, a sharp improvement over the \(\mathop {\mathcal {O}}(mn)\) bound that is known for the directed case. The second constraint is proper-forest. In this variant, we do not have the requirement that each tree contains a resource, but the forest must contain only proper trees, i.e., trees that have at least two vertices each. We develop a hybrid-consistency algorithm for this case whose running time is \(\mathop {\mathcal {O}}(mn)\) in the worst case, and \(\mathop {\mathcal {O}}(m\sqrt{n})\) in many (typical) cases.     

Branch-and-cut algorithms for the undirected m-Peripatetic Salesman Problem

In the m-Peripatetic Salesman Problem (m-PSP) the aim is to determine m edge disjoint Hamiltonian cycles of minimum total cost on a graph. This article describes exact branch-and-cut solution procedures for the undirected m-PSP. Computational results are reported on random and Euclidean graphs.     

Dijkstra meets Steiner: a fast exact goal-oriented Steiner tree algorithm

We present a new exact algorithm for the Steiner tree problem in edge-weighted graphs. Our algorithm improves the classical dynamic programming approach by Dreyfus and Wagner. We achieve a significantly better practical performance via pruning and future costs, a generalization of a well-known concept to speed up shortest path computations. Our algorithm matches the best known worst-case run time and has a fast, often superior, practical performance: on some large instances originating from VLSI design, previous best run times are improved upon by orders of magnitudes. We are also able to solve larger instances of the d-dimensional rectilinear Steiner tree problem for \(d \in \{3, 4, 5\}\), whose Hanan grids contain up to several millions of edges.