Simple, strict, proper, happy: A study of reachability in temporal graphs

Abstract

Dynamic networks are a complex subject. Not only do they inherit the complexity of static networks (as a particular case); they are also sensitive to definitional subtleties that are a frequent source of confusion and incomparability of results in the literature.In this paper, we take a step back and examine three such aspects in more details, exploring their impact in a systematic way; namely, whether the temporal paths are required to be strict (i.e., the times along a path must increasing, not just be non-decreasing), whether the time labeling is proper (two adjacent edges cannot be present at the same time) and whether the time labeling is simple (an edge can have only one presence time). In particular, we investigate how different combinations of these features impact the expressivity of the graph in terms of reachability.Our results imply a hierarchy of expressivity for the resulting settings, shedding light on the loss of generality that one is making when considering either combination. Some settings are more general than expected; in particular, proper temporal graphs turn out to be as expressive as general temporal graphs where non-strict paths are allowed. Also, we show that the simplest setting, that of happy temporal graphs (i.e., both proper and simple) remains expressive enough to emulate the reachability of general temporal graphs in a certain (restricted but useful) sense. Furthermore, this setting is advocated as a target of choice for proving negative results. We illustrate this by strengthening two known results to happy graphs (namely, the inexistence of sparse spanners, and the hardness of computing temporal components). Overall, we hope that this article can be seen as a guide for choosing between different settings of temporal graphs, while being aware of the way these choices affect generality.