A \emph{star coloring} of a graph $G$ is a proper vertex-coloring such that no path on four vertices is $2$-colored. The minimum number of colors required to obtain a star coloring of a graph $G$ is called star chromatic number and it is denoted by $\chi_s(G)$. A graph $G$ is called $k$-critical if $\chi_s(G)=k$ and $\chi_s(G -e) < \chi_s(G)$ for every edge $e \in E(G)$. In this paper, we give a characterization of 3-critical, $(n-1)$-critical and $(n-2)$-critical graphs with respect to star coloring, where $n$ denotes the number of vertices of $G$. We also give upper and lower bounds on the minimum number of edges in $(n-1)$-critical and $(n-2)$-critical graphs.
Finding a maximum cardinality common independent set in two matroids (also known as Matroid Intersection) is a classical combinatorial optimization problem, which generalizes several well-known problems, such as finding a maximum bipartite matching, a maximum colorful forest, and an arborescence in directed graphs. Enumerating all maximal common independent sets in two (or more) matroids is a classical enumeration problem. In this paper, we address an ``intersection'' of these problems: Given two matroids and a threshold $\tau$, the goal is to enumerate all maximal common independent sets in the matroids with cardinality at least $\tau$. We show that this problem can be solved in polynomial delay and polynomial space. We also discuss how to enumerate all maximal common independent sets of two matroids in non-increasing order of their cardinalities.
In this paper, we study the following problem. Consider a setting where a proposal is offered to the vertices of a given network $G$, and the vertices must conduct a vote and decide whether to accept the proposal or reject it. Each vertex $v$ has its own valuation of the proposal; we say that $v$ is ``happy'' if its valuation is positive (i.e., it expects to gain from adopting the proposal) and ``sad'' if its valuation is negative. However, vertices do not base their vote merely on their own valuation. Rather, a vertex $v$ is a \emph{proponent} of the proposal if the majority of its neighbors are happy with it and an \emph{opponent} in the opposite case. At the end of the vote, the network collectively accepts the proposal whenever the majority of its vertices are proponents. We study this problem for regular graphs with loops. Specifically, we consider the class $\mathcal{G}_{n|d|h}$ of $d$-regular graphs of odd order $n$ with all $n$ loops and $h$ happy vertices. We are interested in establishing necessary and sufficient conditions for the class $\mathcal{G}_{n|d|h}$ to contain a labeled graph accepting the proposal, as well as conditions to contain a graph rejecting the proposal. We also discuss connections to the existing literature, including that on majority domination, and investigate the properties of the obtained conditions.
We consider the problem of distributed lossless computation of a function of two sources by one common user. To do so, we first build a bipartite graph, where two disjoint parts denote the individual source outcomes. We then project the bipartite graph onto each source to obtain an edge-weighted characteristic graph (EWCG), where edge weights capture the function's structure, by how much the source outcomes are to be distinguished, generalizing the classical notion of characteristic graphs. Via exploiting the notions of characteristic graphs, the fractional coloring of such graphs, and edge weights, the sources separately build multi-fold graphs that capture vector-valued source sequences, determine vertex colorings for such graphs, encode these colorings, and send them to the user that performs minimum-entropy decoding on its received information to recover the desired function in an asymptotically lossless manner. For the proposed EWCG compression setup, we characterize the fundamental limits of distributed compression, verify the communication complexity through an example, contrast it with traditional coloring schemes, and demonstrate that we can attain compression gains higher than $\% 30$ over traditional coloring.
The problem $\textrm{PosSLP}$ involves determining whether an integer computed by a given straight-line program is positive. This problem has attracted considerable attention within the field of computational complexity as it provides a complete characterization of the complexity associated with numerical computation. However, non-trivial lower bounds for $\textrm{PosSLP}$ remain unknown. In this paper, we demonstrate that $\textrm{PosSLP} \in \textrm{BPP}$ would imply that $\textrm{NP} \subseteq \textrm{BPP}$, under the assumption of a conjecture concerning the complexity of the radical of a polynomial proposed by Dutta, Saxena, and Sinhababu (STOC'2018). Our proof builds upon the established $\textrm{NP}$-hardness of determining if a univariate polynomial computed by an SLP has a real root, as demonstrated by Perrucci and Sabia (JDA'2005). Therefore, our lower bound for $\textrm{PosSLP}$ represents a significant advancement in understanding the complexity of this problem. It constitutes the first non-trivial lower bound for $\textrm{PosSLP}$ , albeit conditionally. Additionally, we show that counting the real roots of an integer univariate polynomial, given as input by a straight-line program, is $\#\textrm{P}$-hard.
Polarization is an unprecedented coding technique in that it not only achieves channel capacity, but also does so at a faster speed of convergence than any other coding technique. This speed is measured by the ``scaling exponent'' and its importance is three-fold. Firstly, estimating the scaling exponent is challenging and demands a deeper understanding of the dynamics of communication channels. Secondly, scaling exponents serve as a benchmark for different variants of polar codes that helps us select the proper variant for real-life applications. Thirdly, the need to optimize for the scaling exponent sheds light on how to reinforce the design of polar codes. In this paper, we generalize the binary erasure channel (BEC), the simplest communication channel and the protagonist of many coding theory studies, to the ``tetrahedral erasure channel'' (TEC). We then invoke Mori--Tanaka's $2 \times 2$ matrix over GF$(4)$ to construct polar codes over TEC. Our main contribution is showing that the dynamic of TECs converges to an almost--one-parameter family of channels, which then leads to an upper bound of $3.328$ on the scaling exponent. This is the first non-binary matrix whose scaling exponent is upper-bounded. It also polarizes BEC faster than all known binary matrices up to $23 \times 23$ in size. Our result indicates that expanding the alphabet is a more effective and practical alternative to enlarging the matrix in order to achieve faster polarization.
Recently, some studies on the fair allocation of indivisible goods notice a connection between a purely combinatorial problem called the Rainbow Cycle problem and a fairness notion known as $\efx$: assuming that the rainbow cycle number for parameter $d$ (i.e. $\rainbow(d)$) is $O(d^\beta \log^\gamma d)$, we can find a $(1-\epsilon)$-$\efx$ allocation with $O_{\epsilon}(n^{\frac{\beta}{\beta+1}}\log^{\frac{\gamma}{\beta +1}} n)$ number of discarded goods \cite{chaudhury2021improving}. The best upper bound on $\rainbow(d)$ is improved in a series of works to $O(d^4)$ \cite{chaudhury2021improving}, $O(d^{2+o(1)})$ \cite{berendsohn2022fixed}, and finally to $O(d^2)$ \cite{Akrami2022}.\footnote{We refer to the note at the end of the introduction for a short discussion on the result of \cite{Akrami2022}.} Also, via a simple observation, we have $\rainbow(d) \in \Omega(d)$ \cite{chaudhury2021improving}. In this paper, we introduce another problem in extremal combinatorics. For a parameter $\ell$, we define the rainbow path degree and denote it by $\ech(\ell)$. We show that any lower bound on $\ech(\ell)$ yields an upper bound on $\rainbow(d)$. Next, we prove that $\ech(\ell) \in \Omega(\ell^2/\log n)$ which yields an almost tight upper bound of $\rainbow(d) \in \Omega(d \log d)$. This in turn proves the existence of $(1-\epsilon)$-$\efx$ allocation with $O_{\epsilon}(\sqrt{n \log n})$ number of discarded goods. In addition, for the special case of the Rainbow Cycle problem that the edges in each part form a permutation, we improve the upper bound to $\rainbow(d) \leq 2d-4$. We leverage $\ech(\ell)$ to achieve this bound. Our conjecture is that the exact value of $\ech(\ell) $ is $ \lfloor \frac{\ell^2}{2} \rfloor -1$. We provide some experiments that support this conjecture. Assuming this conjecture is correct, we have $\rainbow(d) \in \Theta(d)$.
In 1943, Hadwiger conjectured that every graph with no $K_t$ minor is $(t-1)$-colorable for every $t\ge 1$. In the 1980s, Kostochka and Thomason independently proved that every graph with no $K_t$ minor has average degree $O(t\sqrt{\log t})$ and hence is $O(t\sqrt{\log t})$-colorable. Recently, Norin, Song and the second author showed that every graph with no $K_t$ minor is $O(t(\log t)^{\beta})$-colorable for every $\beta > 1/4$, making the first improvement on the order of magnitude of the $O(t\sqrt{\log t})$ bound. The first main result of this paper is that every graph with no $K_t$ minor is $O(t\log\log t)$-colorable. This is a corollary of our main technical result that the chromatic number of a $K_t$-minor-free graph is bounded by $O(t(1+f(G,t)))$ where $f(G,t)$ is the maximum of $\frac{\chi(H)}{a}$ over all $a\ge \frac{t}{\sqrt{\log t}}$ and $K_a$-minor-free subgraphs $H$ of $G$ that are small (i.e. $O(a\log^4 a)$ vertices). This has a number of interesting corollaries. First as mentioned, using the current best-known bounds on coloring small $K_t$-minor-free graphs, we show that $K_t$-minor-free graphs are $O(t\log\log t)$-colorable. Second, it shows that proving Linear Hadwiger's Conjecture (that $K_t$-minor-free graphs are $O(t)$-colorable) reduces to proving it for small graphs. Third, we prove that $K_t$-minor-free graphs with clique number at most $\sqrt{\log t}/ (\log \log t)^2$ are $O(t)$-colorable. This implies our final corollary that Linear Hadwiger's Conjecture holds for $K_r$-free graphs for every fixed $r$. One key to proving the main theorem is a new standalone result that every $K_t$-minor-free graph of average degree $d=\Omega(t)$ has a subgraph on $O(t \log^3 t)$ vertices with average degree $\Omega(d)$.
Graph searches and their respective search trees are widely used in algorithmic graph theory. The problem whether a given spanning tree can be a graph search tree has been considered for different searches, graph classes and search tree paradigms. Similarly, the question whether a particular vertex can be visited last by some search has been studied extensively in recent years. We combine these two problems by considering the question whether a vertex can be a leaf of a graph search tree. We show that for particular search trees, including DFS trees, this problem is easy if we allow the leaf to be the first vertex of the search ordering. We contrast this result by showing that the problem becomes hard for many searches, including DFS and BFS, if we forbid the leaf to be the first vertex. Additionally, we present several structural and algorithmic results for search tree leaves of chordal graphs.
We prove new lower bounds on the modularity of graphs. Specifically, the modularity of a graph $G$ with average degree $\bar d$ is $\Omega(\bar{d}^{-1/2})$, under some mild assumptions on the degree sequence of $G$. The lower bound $\Omega(\bar{d}^{-1/2})$ applies, for instance, to graphs with a power-law degree sequence or a near-regular degree sequence. It has been suggested that the relatively high modularity of the Erd\H{o}s-R\'enyi random graph $G_{n,p}$ stems from the random fluctuations in its edge distribution, however our results imply high modularity for any graph with a degree sequence matching that typically found in $G_{n,p}$. The proof of the new lower bound relies on certain weight-balanced bisections with few cross-edges, which build on ideas of Alon [Combinatorics, Probability and Computing (1997)] and may be of independent interest.
Automata operating on infinite objects feature prominently in the theory of the modal $\mu$-calculus. One such application concerns the tableau games introduced by Niwi\'{n}ski & Walukiewicz, of which the winning condition for infinite plays can be naturally checked by a nondeterministic parity stream automaton. Inspired by work of Jungteerapanich and Stirling we show how determinization constructions of this automaton may be used to directly obtain proof systems for the $\mu$-calculus. More concretely, we introduce a binary tree construction for determinizing nondeterministic parity stream automata. Using this construction we define the annotated cyclic proof system $\mathsf{BT}$, where formulas are annotated by tuples of binary strings. Soundness and Completeness of this system follow almost immediately from the correctness of the determinization method.