Let c denote a non-negative constant. Suppose that we are given an edge-weighted bipartite graph G=(V,E) with its 2-layered drawing and a family X of intersecting edge pairs. We consider the problem of finding a maximum weighted matching M* such that each edge in M* intersects with at most c other edges in M*, and that all edge crossings in M* are contained in X. In the present paper, we propose polynomial-time algorithms for the problem for c=1 and 2. The time complexities of the algorithms are O((k+m)log n) for c=1 and O(m^4log n+k^3+n(k^2+log n)) for c=2, respectively, where n=|V|, m=|E| and k=|X|.
The non-crossing (or crossing-free) constraint has been considered for some problems of finding an optimal'' subgraph. It is @cite_23 who first studied the algorithmic aspect of the MW-0-CPEMP explicitly. For the edge-unweighted case, they provided a polynomial-time algorithm that runs in @math time or in @math time, where @math denotes the cardinality of a maximum 0-CPE matching. They also extended the algorithm to the edge-weighted case, which yields an @math time algorithm. A bipartite graph is convex if, for every @math , @math @math implies @math for all @math . For the MW-0-CPEMP in edge-unweighted convex bipartite graphs, @cite_5 presented an algorithm whose running time is @math . @cite_0 considered the Euclidean non-crossing bipartite matching problem, where each vertex is represented by a 2D point. The objective is to find a non-crossing perfect matching whose longest edge is minimized. They showed that the problem is NP-hard in general, but that it is polynomially-solvable in some special cases. More recently, @cite_7 showed that the minimum cost non-crossing flow problem on a layered network is NP-hard. Ruangwises and Itoh @cite_21 studied the stable marriage problem under the non-crossing constraint, showing that there exists a weakly stable non-crossing matching for any instance.
@cite_7 @cite_21 @cite_0 @cite_23 @cite_5
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We consider computing a maximum non-crossing matching in convex bipartite graphs. For a convex bipartite graph of n vertices and m edges, we present an O ( n log n ) time algorithm for finding a maximum non-crossing matching in the graph. The previous best algorithm takes O ( m + n log n ) time (Malucelli et?al., 1993). Since m = ? ( n 2 ) in the worst case, our result improves the previous work. Motivated by a crane assignment problem, we consider a Euclidean bipartite matching problem with edge-crossing constraints. Specifically, given n red points and n blue points in the plane, we want to construct a perfect matching between red and blue points that minimizes the length of the longest edge, while imposing a constraint that no two edges may cross each other. We show that the problem cannot be approximately solved within a factor less than 1:277 in polynomial time unless P = NP. We give simple dynamic programming algorithms that solve our problem in two special cases, namely (1) the case where the red and blue points form the vertices of a convex polygon and (2) the case where the red points are collinear and the blue points lie to one side of the line through the red points. We study a multi-player one-round game termed Stackelberg Network Pricing Game, in which a leader can set prices for a subset of m priceable edges in a graph. The other edges have a fixed cost. Based on the leader’s decision one or more followers optimize a polynomial-time solvable combinatorial minimization problem and choose a minimum cost solution satisfying their requirements based on the fixed costs and the leader’s prices. The leader receives as revenue the total amount of prices paid by the followers for priceable edges in their solutions. Our model extends several known pricing problems, including single-minded and unit-demand pricing, as well as Stackelberg pricing for certain follower problems like shortest path or minimum spanning tree. Our first main result is a tight analysis of a single-price algorithm for the single follower game, which provides a (1+e)log m-approximation. This can be extended to provide a (1+e)(log k+log m)-approximation for the general problem and k followers. The problem is also shown to be hard to approximate within @math for some e>0. If followers have demands, the single-price algorithm provides an @math -approximation, and the problem is hard to approximate within @math for some e>0. Our second main result is a polynomial time algorithm for revenue maximization in the special case of Stackelberg bipartite vertex-cover, which is based on non-trivial max-flow and LP-duality techniques. This approach can be extended to provide constant-factor approximations for any constant number of followers. A perfect straight-line matching @math on a finite set @math of points in the plane is a set of segments such that each point in @math is an endpoint of exactly one segment. @math is non-crossing if no two segments in @math cross each other. Given a perfect straight-line matching @math with at least one crossing, we can remove this crossing by a flip operation. The flip operation removes two crossing segments on a point set @math and adds two non-crossing segments to attain a new perfect matching @math . It is well known that after a finite number of flips, a non-crossing matching is attained and no further flip is possible. However, prior to this work, no non-trivial upper bound on the number of flips was known. If @math (resp. @math ) is the maximum length of the longest (resp. shortest) sequence of flips starting from any matching of size @math , we show that @math and @math (resp. @math and @math ). In this paper, we study the non-bipartite maximum matching problem in the semi-streaming model. The maximum matching problem in the semi-streaming model has received a significant amount of attention lately. While the problem has been somewhat well solved for bipartite graphs, the known algorithms for non-bipartite graphs use @math passes or @math time to compute a @math approximation. In this paper we provide the first FPTAS (polynomial in @math ) for the problem which is efficient in both the running time and the number of passes. We also show that we can estimate the size of the matching in @math passes using slightly superlinear space. To achieve both results, we use the structural properties of the matching polytope such as the laminarity of the tight sets and total dual integrality. The algorithms are iterative, and are based on the fractional packing and covering framework. However the formulations herein require exponentially many variables or constraints. We use laminarity, metric embeddings and graph sparsification to reduce the space required by the algorithms in between and across the iterations. This is the first use of these ideas in the semi-streaming model to solve a combinatorial optimization problem. Consider a bipartite graph G = (O, D, E) where O and D are origin and destination node sets respectively (O = D = n), and E is a set of edges (i, j), i ∈ O and j ∈ D(E= m). Suppose we draw the origin nodes and the destination nodes arranged in two columns and the edges as straight line segments between origins and destinations. A noncrossing matching is a subset of edges M ⊑ E such that no two edges of M intersect (including intersections at nodes). The Maximum Non Crossing Matching (MNCM) is the problem of finding the noncrossing matching of maximum cardinality. Let p denote the cardinality of the MNCM. Problems arising in several fields can be modelled as MNCM: for example the 3-Side Switch Box in VLSI design has been presented in [2] where an O(n 2) time algorithm is proposed. The problem can be reduced to the one of finding the longest increasing subsequence in a permutation of size m [1]. An algorithm for this problem has been proposed by Fredman and slightly improved by Widmayer and Wong[7]; in our case the algorithm complexity is O(m + (m - p) log (p). In this paper some labeling algorithms for the MNCM, which work directly on the bipartite graph, will be proposed. The overall complexity is improved to O(m log log n) or to O(m + minnp, (m - p) log p). Finally the weighted case is considered. We present algorithmic and hardness results for network design problems with degree or order constraints. The first problem we consider is the Survivable Network Design problem with degree constraints on vertices. The objective is to find a minimum cost subgraph which satisfies connectivity requirements between vertices and also degree upper bounds @math on the vertices. This includes the well-studied Minimum Bounded Degree Spanning Tree problem as a special case. Our main result is a @math -approximation algorithm for the edge-connectivity Survivable Network Design problem with degree constraints, where the cost of the returned solution is at most twice the cost of an optimum solution (satisfying the degree bounds) and the degree of each vertex @math is at most @math . This implies the first constant factor (bicriteria) approximation algorithms for many degree constrained network design problems, including the Minimum Bounded Degree Steiner Forest problem. Our results also extend to directed graphs and provide the first constant factor (bicriteria) approximation algorithms for the Minimum Bounded Degree Arborescence problem and the Minimum Bounded Degree Strongly @math -Edge-Connected Subgraph problem. In contrast, we show that the vertex-connectivity Survivable Network Design problem with degree constraints is hard to approximate, even when the cost of every edge is zero. A striking aspect of our algorithmic result is its simplicity. It is based on the iterative relaxation method, which is an extension of Jain's iterative rounding method. This provides an elegant and unifying algorithmic framework for a broad range of network design problems. We also study the problem of finding a minimum cost @math -edge-connected subgraph with at least @math vertices, which we call the @math -subgraph problem. This generalizes some well-studied classical problems such as the @math -MST and the minimum cost @math -edge-connected subgraph problems. We give a polylogarithmic approximation for the @math -subgraph problem. However, by relating it to the Densest @math -Subgraph problem, we provide evidence that the @math -subgraph problem might be hard to approximate for arbitrary @math . We give an approximation algorithm for non-uniform sparsest cut with the following guarantee: For any @math , given cost and demand graphs with edge weights @math respectively, we can find a set @math with @math at most @math times the optimal non-uniform sparsest cut value, in time @math provided @math . Here @math is the @math 'th smallest generalized eigenvalue of the Laplacian matrices of cost and demand graphs; @math (resp. @math ) is the weight of edges crossing the @math cut in cost (resp. demand) graph and @math is the sparsity of the optimal cut. In words, we show that the non-uniform sparsest cut problem is easy when the generalized spectrum grows moderately fast. To the best of our knowledge, there were no results based on higher order spectra for non-uniform sparsest cut prior to this work. Even for uniform sparsest cut, the quantitative aspects of our result are somewhat stronger than previous methods. Similar results hold for other expansion measures like edge expansion, normalized cut, and conductance, with the @math 'th smallest eigenvalue of the normalized Laplacian playing the role of @math in the latter two cases. Our proof is based on an l1-embedding of vectors from a semi-definite program from the Lasserre hierarchy. The embedded vectors are then rounded to a cut using standard threshold rounding. We hope that the ideas connecting @math -embeddings to Lasserre SDPs will find other applications. Another aspect of the analysis is the adaptation of the column selection paradigm from our earlier work on rounding Lasserre SDPs [GS11] to pick a set of edges rather than vertices. This feature is important in order to extend the algorithms to non-uniform sparsest cut. In this paper we consider the Stochastic Matching problem, which is motivated by applications in kidney exchange and online dating. We are given an undirected graph in which every edge is assigned a probability of existence and a positive profit, and each node is assigned a positive integer called timeout. We know whether an edge exists or not only after probing it. On this random graph we are executing a process, which one-by-one probes the edges and gradually constructs a matching. The process is constrained in two ways: once an edge is taken it cannot be removed from the matching, and the timeout of node @math upper-bounds the number of edges incident to @math that can be probed. The goal is to maximize the expected profit of the constructed matching. For this problem (Algorithmica 2012) provided a @math -approximation algorithm for bipartite graphs, and a @math -approximation for general graphs. In this work we improve the approximation factors to @math and @math , respectively. We also consider an online version of the bipartite case, where one side of the partition arrives node by node, and each time a node @math arrives we have to decide which edges incident to @math we want to probe, and in which order. Here we present a @math -approximation, improving on the @math -approximation of The main technical ingredient in our result is a novel way of probing edges according to a random but non-uniform permutation. Patching this method with an algorithm that works best for large probability edges (plus some additional ideas) leads to our improved approximation factors. We prove the first non-trivial performance ratios strictly above 0.5 for weighted versions of the oblivious matching problem. Even for the unweighted version, since Aronson, Dyer, Frieze, and Suen first proved a non-trivial ratio above 0.5 in the mid-1990s, during the next twenty years several attempts have been made to improve this ratio, until Chan, Chen, Wu and Zhao successfully achieved a significant ratio of 0.523 very recently (SODA 2014). To the best of our knowledge, our work is the first in the literature that considers the node-weighted and edge-weighted versions of the problem in arbitrary graphs (as opposed to bipartite graphs). (1) For arbitrary node weights, we prove that a weighted version of the Ranking algorithm has ratio strictly above 0.5. We have discovered a new structural property of the ranking algorithm: if a node has two unmatched neighbors at the end of algorithm, then it will still be matched even when its rank is demoted to the bottom. This property allows us to form LP constraints for both the node-weighted and the unweighted oblivious matching problems. As a result, we prove that the ratio for the node-weighted case is at least 0.501512. Interestingly via the structural property, we can also improve slightly the ratio for the unweighted case to 0.526823 (from the previous best 0.523166 in SODA 2014). (2) For a bounded number of distinct edge weights, we show that ratio strictly above 0.5 can be achieved by partitioning edges carefully according to the weights, and running the (unweighted) Ranking algorithm on each part. Our analysis is based on a new primal-dual framework known as , in which dual feasibility is bypassed. Instead, only dual constraints corresponding to edges in an optimal matching are satisfied. Using this framework we also design and analyze an algorithm for the edge-weighted online bipartite matching problem with free disposal. We prove that for the case of bounded online degrees, the ratio is strictly above 0.5. The Euclidean @math -means problem is a classical problem that has been extensively studied in the theoretical computer science, machine learning and the computational geometry communities. In this problem, we are given a set of @math points in Euclidean space @math , and the goal is to choose @math centers in @math so that the sum of squared distances of each point to its nearest center is minimized. The best approximation algorithms for this problem include a polynomial time constant factor approximation for general @math and a @math -approximation which runs in time @math . At the other extreme, the only known computational complexity result for this problem is NP-hardness [ADHP'09]. The main difficulty in obtaining hardness results stems from the Euclidean nature of the problem, and the fact that any point in @math can be a potential center. This gap in understanding left open the intriguing possibility that the problem might admit a PTAS for all @math . In this paper we provide the first hardness of approximation for the Euclidean @math -means problem. Concretely, we show that there exists a constant @math such that it is NP-hard to approximate the @math -means objective to within a factor of @math . We show this via an efficient reduction from the vertex cover problem on triangle-free graphs: given a triangle-free graph, the goal is to choose the fewest number of vertices which are incident on all the edges. Additionally, we give a proof that the current best hardness results for vertex cover can be carried over to triangle-free graphs. To show this we transform @math , a known hard vertex cover instance, by taking a graph product with a suitably chosen graph @math , and showing that the size of the (normalized) maximum independent set is almost exactly preserved in the product graph using a spectral analysis, which might be of independent interest. We present a method for solving the shortest transshipmen problem - also known as uncapacitated minimum cost flow - up to a multiplicative error of @math in undirected graphs with polynomially bounded integer edge weights using a tailored gradient descent algorithm. An important special case of the transshipment problem is the single-source shortest paths (SSSP) problem. Our gradient descent algorithm takes @math iterations, and in each iteration it needs to solve the transshipment problem up to a multiplicative error of @math , where @math is the number of nodes. In particular, this allows us to perform a single iteration by computing a solution on a sparse spanner of logarithmic stretch. As a consequence, we improve prior work by obtaining the following results: (1) Broadcast congest model: @math -approximate SSSP using @math rounds, where @math is the (hop) diameter of the network. (2) Broadcast congested clique model: @math -approximate transshipment and SSSP using @math rounds. (3) Multipass streaming model: @math -approximate transshipment and SSSP using @math space and @math passes. The previously fastest algorithms for these models leverage sparse hop sets. We bypass the hop set construction; computing a spanner is sufficient with our method. The above bounds assume non-negative integer edge weights that are polynomially bounded in @math ; for general non-negative weights, running times scale with the logarithm of the maximum ratio between non-zero weights. In case of asymmetric costs, running times scale with the maximum ratio between the costs of both directions over all edges. We show a new way to round vector solutions of semidefinite programming (SDP) hierarchies into integral solutions, based on a connection between these hierarchies and the spectrum of the input graph. We demonstrate the utility of our method by providing a new SDP-hierarchy based algorithm for constraint satisfaction problems with 2-variable constraints (2-CSP's). More concretely, we show for every 2-CSP instance I a rounding algorithm for r rounds of the Lasserre SDP hierarchy for I that obtains an integral solution that is at most worse than the relaxation's value (normalized to lie in [0,1]), as long as r > k ( ) ( ) ;, where k is the alphabet size of I, @math , and @math denotes the number of eigenvalues larger than @math in the normalized adjacency matrix of the constraint graph of @math . In the case that @math is a instance, the threshold @math is only a polynomial in @math , and is independent of the alphabet size. Also in this case, we can give a non-trivial bound on the number of rounds for instance. In particular our result yields an SDP-hierarchy based algorithm that matches the performance of the recent subexponential algorithm of Arora, Barak and Steurer (FOCS 2010) in the worst case, but runs faster on a natural family of instances, thus further restricting the set of possible hard instances for Khot's Unique Games Conjecture. Our algorithm actually requires less than the @math constraints specified by the @math level of the Lasserre hierarchy, and in some cases @math rounds of our program can be evaluated in time @math . We consider the following generalization of the binary search problem. A search strategy is required to locate an unknown target node @math in a given tree @math . Upon querying a node @math of the tree, the strategy receives as a reply an indication of the connected component of @math containing the target @math . The cost of querying each node is given by a known non-negative weight function, and the considered objective is to minimize the total query cost for a worst-case choice of the target. Designing an optimal strategy for a weighted tree search instance is known to be strongly NP-hard, in contrast to the unweighted variant of the problem which can be solved optimally in linear time. Here, we show that weighted tree search admits a quasi-polynomial time approximation scheme: for any @math , there exists a @math -approximation strategy with a computation time of @math . Thus, the problem is not APX-hard, unless @math . By applying a generic reduction, we obtain as a corollary that the studied problem admits a polynomial-time @math -approximation. This improves previous @math -approximation approaches, where the @math -notation disregards @math -factors. A natural way to deal with multiple, partially conflicting objectives is turning all the objectives but one into budget constraints. Many classical optimization problems, such as maximum spanning tree and forest, shortest path, maximum weight (perfect) matching, maximum weight independent set (basis) in a matroid or in the intersection of two matroids, become NP-hard even with one budget constraint. Still, for most of these problems efficient deterministic and randomized approximation schemes are known. Not much is known however about the case of two or more budgets: filling this gap, at least partially, is the main goal of this paper. In more detail, we obtain the following main results: Using iterative rounding for the first time in multi-objective optimization, we obtain multi-criteria PTASs (which slightly violate the budget constraints) for spanning tree, matroid basis, and bipartite matching with @math k = O ( 1 ) budget constraints. We present a simple mechanism to transform multi-criteria approximation schemes into pure approximation schemes for problems whose feasible solutions define an independence system. This gives improved algorithms for several problems. In particular, this mechanism can be applied to the above bipartite matching algorithm, hence obtaining a pure PTAS. We show that points in low-dimensional faces of any matroid polytope are almost integral, an interesting result on its own. This gives a deterministic approximation scheme for @math k -budgeted matroid independent set. We present a deterministic approximation scheme for @math k -budgeted matching (in general graphs), where @math k = O ( 1 ) . Interestingly, to show that our procedure works, we rely on a non-constructive result by Stromquist and Woodall, which is based on the Ham Sandwich Theorem. Stable Marriage is a fundamental problem to both computer science and economics. Four well-known NP-hard optimization versions of this problem are the Sex-Equal Stable Marriage (SESM), Balanced Stable Marriage (BSM), max-Stable Marriage with Ties (max-SMT) and min-Stable Marriage with Ties (min-SMT) problems. In this paper, we analyze these problems from the viewpoint of Parameterized Complexity. We conduct the first study of these problems with respect to the parameter treewidth. First, we study the treewidth @math of the primal graph. We establish that all four problems are W[1]-hard. In particular, while it is easy to show that all four problems admit algorithms that run in time @math , we prove that all of these algorithms are likely to be essentially optimal. Next, we study the treewidth @math of the rotation digraph. In this context, the max-SMT and min-SMT are not defined. For both SESM and BSM, we design (non-trivial) algorithms that run in time @math . Then, for both SESM and BSM, we also prove that unless SETH is false, algorithms that run in time @math do not exist for any fixed @math . We thus present a comprehensive, complete picture of the behavior of central optimization versions of Stable Marriage with respect to treewidth. We present a general approximation technique for a large class of graph problems. Our technique mostly applies to problems of covering, at minimum cost, the vertices of a graph with trees, cycles or paths satisfying certain requirements. In particular, many basic combinatorial optimization problems fit in this framework, including the shortest path, minimum-cost spanning tree, minimum-weight perfect matching, traveling salesman and Steiner tree problems. Our technique produces approximation algorithms that run in @math time and come within a factor of 2 of optimal for most of these problems. For instance, we obtain a 2-approximation algorithm for the minimum-weight perfect matching problem under the triangle inequality. Our running time of @math time compares favorably with the best strongly polynomial exact algorithms running in @math time for dense graphs. A similar result is obtained for the 2-matching problem and its variants. We also derive the first approximation algorithms for many NP-complete problems, including the non-fixed point-to-point connection problem, the exact path partitioning problem and complex location-design problems. Moreover, for the prize-collecting traveling salesman or Steiner tree problems, we obtain 2-approximation algorithms, therefore improving the previously best-known performance guarantees of 2.5 and 3, respectively [Math. Programming, 59 (1993), pp. 413--420]. Given an undirected graph G = (V ,E ), the density of a subgraph on vertex set S is defined as @math , where E (S ) is the set of edges in the subgraph induced by nodes in S . Finding subgraphs of maximum density is a very well studied problem. One can also generalize this notion to directed graphs. For a directed graph one notion of density given by Kannan and Vinay [12] is as follows: given subsets S and T of vertices, the density of the subgraph is @math , where E (S ,T ) is the set of edges going from S to T . Without any size constraints, a subgraph of maximum density can be found in polynomial time. When we require the subgraph to have a specified size, the problem of finding a maximum density subgraph becomes NP -hard. In this paper we focus on developing fast polynomial time algorithms for several variations of dense subgraph problems for both directed and undirected graphs. When there is no size bound, we extend the flow based technique for obtaining a densest subgraph in directed graphs and also give a linear time 2-approximation algorithm for it. When a size lower bound is specified for both directed and undirected cases, we show that the problem is NP-complete and give fast algorithms to find subgraphs within a factor 2 of the optimum density. We also show that solving the densest subgraph problem with an upper bound on size is as hard as solving the problem with an exact size constraint, within a constant factor. We study undirected networks with edge costs that satisfy the triangle inequality. Let @math denote the number of nodes. We present an @math -approximation algorithm for a generalization of the metric-cost subset @math -node-connectivity problem. Our approximation guarantee is proved via lower bounds that apply to the simple edge-connectivity version of the problem, where the requirements are for edge-disjoint paths rather than for openly node-disjoint paths. A corollary is that, for metric costs and for each @math , there exists a @math -node connected graph whose cost is within a factor of @math of the cost of any simple @math -edge connected graph. Based on our @math -approximation algorithm, we present an @math -approximation algorithm for the metric-cost node-connectivity survivable network design problem, where @math denotes the maximum requirement over all pairs of nodes. Our results contrast with the case of edge costs of 0 or 1, where Kortsarz, Krauthgamer, and Lee. [SIAM J. Comput., 33 (2004), pp. 704-720] recently proved, assuming NP @math DTIME( @math ), a hardness-of-approximation lower bound of @math for the subset @math -node-connectivity problem, where @math denotes a small positive number. The NP-hard Subset Interconnection Design problem, also known as Minimum Topic-Connected Overlay, is motivated by numerous applications including the design of scalable overlay networks and vacuum systems. It has as input a finite set @math and a collection of subsets @math , and asks for a minimum-cardinality edge set @math such that for the graph @math all induced subgraphs @math are connected. We study Subset Interconnection Design in the context of polynomial-time data reduction rules that preserve the possibility of constructing optimal solutions. Our contribution is threefold: First, we show the incorrectness of earlier polynomial-time data reduction rules. Second, we show linear-time solvability in case of a constant number @math of subsets, implying fixed-parameter tractability for the parameter @math . Third, we provide a fixed-parameter tractability result for small subset sizes and tree-like output graphs. To achieve our results, we elaborate o...