The polynomial dichotomy for three nonempty part sandwich problems

We classify into polynomial time or -complete all three nonempty part sandwich problems. This solves the polynomial dichotomy into polynomial time and -complete for this class of graph partition problems.     

Complexity issues for the sandwich homogeneous set problem

Graph sandwich problems were introduced by Golumbic et al. (1994) in [12] for DNA physical mapping problems and can be described as follows. Given a property Π of graphs and two disjoint sets of edges E₁, E₂ with E₁⊆E₂ on a vertex set V, the problem is to find a graph G on V with edge set E_s having property Π and such that E₁⊆E_s⊆E₂.In this paper, we exhibit a quasi-linear reduction between the problem of finding an independent set of size k≥2 in a graph and the problem of finding a sandwich homogeneous set of the same size k. Using this reduction, we prove that a number of natural (decision and counting) problems related to sandwich homogeneous sets are hard in general. We then exploit a little further the reduction and show that finding efficient algorithms to compute small sandwich homogeneous sets would imply substantial improvement for computing triangles in graphs.     

The Wiener maximum quadratic assignment problem

We investigate a special case of the maximum quadratic assignment problem where one matrix is a product matrix and the other matrix is the distance matrix of a one-dimensional point set. We show that this special case, which we call the Wiener maximum quadratic assignment problem, is NP-hard in the ordinary sense and solvable in pseudo-polynomial time.Our approach also yields a polynomial time solution for the following problem from chemical graph theory: find a tree that maximizes the Wiener index among all trees with a prescribed degree sequence. This settles an open problem from the literature.     

Cut problems in graphs with a budget constraint

We study budgeted variants of classical cut problems: the Multiway Cut problem, the Multicut problem, and the k-Cut problem, and provide approximation algorithms for these problems. Specifically, for the budgeted multiway cut and the k-cut problems we provide constant factor approximation algorithms. We show that the budgeted multicut problem is at least as hard to approximate as the sparsest cut problem, and we provide a bi-criteria approximation algorithm for it.     

The complexity of detecting fixed-density clusters

We study the complexity of finding a subgraph of a certain size and a certain density, where density is measured by the average degree. Let γ:N→Q₊ be any density function, i.e., γ is computable in polynomial time and satisfies γ(k)?k-1 for all k∈N. Then γ-CLUSTER is the problem of deciding, given an undirected graph G and a natural number k, whether there is a subgraph of G on k vertices that has average degree at least γ(k). For γ(k)=k-1, this problem is the same as the well-known CLIQUE problem, and thus NP-complete. In contrast to this, the problem is known to be solvable in polynomial time for γ(k)=2. We ask for the possible functions γ such that γ-CLUSTER remains NP-complete or becomes solvable in polynomial time. We show a rather sharp boundary: γ CLUSTER is NP-complete if γ=2+Ω(1/k^1-ε) for some ε>0 and has a polynomial-time algorithm for γ=2+O(1/k). The algorithm also shows that for γ=2+O(1/k^1-o(1)), γ-CLUSTER is solvable in subexponential time 2^no(1).     

The node-edge weighted 2-edge connected subgraph problem: Linear relaxation, facets and separation

Let G=(V,E) be a undirected k-edge connected graph with weights c_e on edges and w_v on nodes. The minimum 2-edge connected subgraph problem, 2ECSP for short, is to find a 2-edge connected subgraph of G, of minimum total weight. The 2ECSP generalizes the well-known Steiner 2-edge connected subgraph problem. In this paper we study the convex hull of the incidence vectors corresponding to feasible solutions of 2ECSP. First, a natural integer programming formulation is given and it is shown that its linear relaxation is not sufficient to describe the polytope associated with 2ECSP even when G is series-parallel. Then, we introduce two families of new valid inequalities and we give sufficient conditions for them to be facet-defining. Later, we concentrate on the separation problem. We find polynomial time algorithms to solve the separation of important subclasses of the introduced inequalities, concluding that the separation of the new inequalities, when G is series-parallel, is polynomially solvable.     

Two graph isomorphism polytopes

The convex hull ψ_n,n of certain (n!)² tensors was considered recently in connection with graph isomorphism. We consider the convex hull ψ_n of the n! diagonals among these tensors. We show: 1. The polytope ψ_n is a face of ψ_n,n. 2. Deciding if a graph G has a subgraph isomorphic to H reduces to optimization over ψ_n. 3. Optimization over ψ_n reduces to optimization over ψ_n,n. In particular, this implies that the subgraph isomorphism problem reduces to optimization over ψ_n,n.     

On the forbidden induced subgraph sandwich problem

We consider the sandwich problem, a generalization of the recognition problem introduced by Golumbic et al. (1995) [15], with respect to classes of graphs defined by excluding induced subgraphs. We prove that the sandwich problem corresponding to excluding a chordless cycle of fixed length k is NP-complete. We prove that the sandwich problem corresponding to excluding K_r?e for fixed r is polynomial. We prove that the sandwich problem corresponding to 3PC(⋅,⋅)-free graphs is NP-complete. These complexity results are related to the classification of a long-standing open problem: the sandwich problem corresponding to perfect graphs.     

The stack loading and unloading problem

When piling a set of items in a single stack, one often does not pay attention to the order. Real-life experience suggests that, whenever a specific item is suddenly requested, we need to dig very deep into the stack to extract it.In this paper we investigate stack reordering strategies aiming at minimizing the number of pop and push operations. In particular we focus on three versions of the problem in which reordering can take place in different phases: when unloading the stack, when loading it or in both phases. We show that the first two variants can be solved in linear time, while for the third one we devise a dynamic programming method with quadratic complexity.     

The x-and-y-axes travelling salesman problem

The x-and-y-axes travelling salesman problem forms a special case of the Euclidean TSP, where all cities are situated on the x-axis and on the y-axis of an orthogonal coordinate system of the Euclidean plane. By carefully analyzing the underlying combinatorial and geometric structures, we show that this problem can be solved in polynomial time. The running time of the resulting algorithm is quadratic in the number of cities.