Counting Maximal Independent Sets in Subcubic Graphs

Maximal independent sets in bipartite graphs obtained from Boolean lattices

Parallel algorithms for fractional and maximal independent sets in planar graphs

A locally-optimal structure is a combinatorial structure that cannot be improved by certain (greedy) local moves, even though it may not be globally optimal. An example is a maximal independent set in a graph. It is trivial to construct an independent set in a graph. It is easy to (greedily) construct a maximal independent set. However, it is NP-hard to construct a globally-optimal (maximum) independent set.This situation is typical. Constructing a locally-optimal structure is somewhat more difficult than constructing an arbitrary structure, and constructing a globally-optimal structure is more difficult than constructing a locally-optimal structure. The same situation arises with listing. The differences between the problems become obscured when we move from listing to counting because nearly everything is \(\#\text {P} \)-complete. However, we highlight an interesting phenomenon that arises in approximate counting, where approximately counting locally-optimal structures is apparently more difficult than approximately counting globally-optimal structures. Specifically, we show that counting maximal independent sets is complete for \(\#\text {P} \) with respect to approximation-preserving reductions, whereas counting all independent sets, or counting maximum independent sets is complete for an apparently smaller class, #RH\(\varPi _1\) which has a prominent role in the complexity of approximate counting. Motivated by the difficulty of approximately counting maximal independent sets in bipartite graphs, we also study counting problems involving minimal separators and minimal edge separators (which are also locally-optimal structures). Minimal separators have applications via fixed-parameter-tractable algorithms for constructing triangulations and phylogenetic trees. Although exact (exponential-time) algorithms exist for listing these structures, we show that the counting problems are as hard as they could possibly be. All of the exact counting problems are \(\#\text {P} \)-complete, and all of the approximation problems are complete for \(\#\text {P} \) with respect to approximation-preserving reductions. A full version [14] containing detailed proofs is available at http://arxiv.org/abs/1411.6829. Theorem-numbering here matches the full version.

A grid graph is the Cartesian product of two path graphs. Enumerating all maximal independent sets in a graph is a well‐known combinatorial problem. For a general graph, it is . In this work, we provide a polynomial‐time algorithm to generate the whole family of maximal independent sets (mis) of complete grid graphs with two rows. The same algorithm is used in two particular cases: chordless paths and cycles. We apply this result to characterize the independent graph (intersection graph of maximal independent sets) of these three classes of graphs. We also present an alternative proof of Euler's result for grid graphs with three rows that can be used for enumerating the family of mis.

Let mi(G) be the number of maximal independent sets in a graph G. A graph G is mi-minimal if mi(H) 2. Hence the extremal problem of calculating m(k) = max{IV(G)1: G is a mi-minimal graph with mi(G) = k} has a solution for any k ~ 1 We show that 2(k -1) ~ m(k) ~ k(k -1) for any k ~ andconjecture that m(k) = 2(k - 1). We also prove NP-completeness of some related problems.

J.Y.-T. Leung (J. Algorithms, no.5, (1984)) presented algorithms for generating all the maximal independent sets in interval graphs and circular-arc graphs. The algorithms take O(n/sup 2/+ beta ) steps, where beta is the sum of the number of nodes in all maximal independent sets. The authors use a new technique to give fast and efficient algorithms for finding all the maximum weight independent sets in interval graphs and circular-arc graphs. The algorithms take O(max(n/sup 2/, beta )) steps in O(n/sup 2/) space, where beta is the sum of the number of nodes in all maximum weight independent sets. The algorithms can be directly applied for finding a maximum weight independent set in these graphs in O(n/sup 2/) steps. Thus, the result is an improvement over the best known result of O(n/sup 2/ log n) for finding the maximum weight independent set in circular-arc graphs. >

Theminimum-degree greedy algorithm, or Greedy for short, is a simple and well-studied method for finding independent sets in graphs. We show that it achieves a performance ratio of (Δ+2)/3 for approximating independent sets in graphs with degree bounded by Δ. The analysis yields a precise characterization of the size of the independent sets found by the algorithm as a function of the independence number, as well as a generalization of Turan's bound. We also analyze the algorithm when run in combination with a known preprocessing technique, and obtain an improved $$(2\bar d + 3)/5$$ performance ratio on graphs with average degree $$\bar d$$ , improving on the previous best $$(\bar d + 1)/2$$ of Hochbaum. Finally, we present an efficient parallel and distributed algorithm attaining the performance guarantees of Greedy.

Counting independent sets in graphs

In this paper, we give a class of graphs that do not admit disjoint maximum and maximal independent (MMI) sets. The concept of inverse independence was introduced by Bhat and Bhat in [Inverse independence number of a graph, Int. J. Comput. Appl. 42(5) (2012) 9–13]. Let [Formula: see text] be a [Formula: see text]-set in [Formula: see text]. An independent set [Formula: see text] is called an inverse independent set with respect to [Formula: see text]. The inverse independence number [Formula: see text] is the size of the largest inverse independent set in [Formula: see text]. Bhat and Bhat gave few bounds on the independence number of a graph, we continue the study by giving some new bounds and exact value for particular classes of graphs: spider tree, the rooted product and Cartesian product of two particular graphs.

A maximal independent set of a graph G is an independent set that is not contained properly in any other independent set of G. Let i(G) denote the number of maximal independent sets of G. Here, we prove two conjectures, suggested by P. Erdös, that the maximum number of maximal independent sets among all graphs of order n in a family Φ is o(3n/3) if Φ is either a family of connected graphs such that the largest value of maximum degrees among all graphs of order n in Φ is o(n) or a family of graphs such that the approaches infinity as n → ∞.

Finding maximum independent sets in graphs with bounded maximum degree is a well-studied NP-complete problem. We study two approaches for finding approximate solutions, and obtain several improved performance ratios.The first is a subgraph removal schema introduced in our previous paper. Using better component algorithms, we obtain an efficient method with a Δ/6(1+o(1)) performance ratio. We then produce an implementation of a theorem of Ajtai et al. on the independence number of clique-free graphs, and use it to obtain a O(Δ/loglogΔ) performance ratio with our schema. This is the first o(Δ) ratio.The second is a local search method of Berman and Fürer for which they proved a fine performance ratio but by using extreme amounts of time. We show how to substantially decrease the computing requirements while maintaining the same performance ratios of roughly (Δ+3)/5 for graphs with maximum degree Δ. We then show that a scaled-down version of their algorithm yields a (Δ+3)/4 performance, improving on previous bounds for reasonably efficient methods.KeywordsLocal SearchMaximum DegreePerformance RatioFree GraphIndependence NumberThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Independent sets in quasi-regular graphs

Let F:0,1n⟶0,1n be a parallel dynamical system over an undirected graph with a Boolean maxterm or minterm function as a global evolution operator. It is well known that every periodic point has at most two periods. Actually, periodic points of different periods cannot coexist, and a fixed point theorem is also known. In addition, an upper bound for the number of periodic points of F has been given. In this paper, we complete the study, solving the minimum number of periodic points’ problem for this kind of dynamical systems which has been usually considered from the point of view of complexity. In order to do this, we use methods based on the notions of minimal dominating sets and maximal independent sets in graphs, respectively. More specifically, we find a lower bound for the number of fixed points and a lower bound for the number of 2-periodic points of F. In addition, we provide a formula that allows us to calculate the exact number of fixed points. Furthermore, we provide some conditions under which these lower bounds are attained, thus generalizing the fixed-point theorem and the 2-period theorem for these systems.

Maximal independent sets in graphs with a given matching number

Maximal independent sets in graphs with at most one cycle