Menger's Theorem for Temporal Paths (Not Walks)

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Ibiapina, Allen, Lopes, Raul, Marino, Andrea, Silva, Ana
Format: Preprint
Published: 2022
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866915551224266752
author Ibiapina, Allen
Lopes, Raul
Marino, Andrea
Silva, Ana
author_facet Ibiapina, Allen
Lopes, Raul
Marino, Andrea
Silva, Ana
contents A (directed) temporal graph is a (directed) graph whose edges are available only at specific times during its (discretized) lifetime $τ$. In this setting, we ask that walks respect the temporal aspect by defining $\textit{temporal walks}$ as sequences of adjacent edges whose appearing times are either strictly increasing or non-decreasing (here called non-strict), depending on the scenario. The notion of disjointness between walks is also not unique: two walks are $\textit{vertex-disjoint}$ if they do not share a vertex, and are $\textit{temporal vertex-disjoint}$ if they do not share a vertex at the same time. Thus a $\textit{temporal path}$ is a temporal walk where no repetition of vertices, at any time, is allowed. This is an important distinction that separates the interpretation of our results from those of previous works on the topic. In this paper we focus on various questions regarding connectivity (maximum number of disjoint paths) and robustness (minimum size of a cut) between a given pair of vertices. Such problems are related to the well-known Menger's Theorem on static graphs. We explore all possible interpretations of such problems, according to vertex and temporal vertex-disjointness, strict and non-strict temporal paths, and directed and undirected temporal graphs. We present a number of new results, the main of which states that Menger's Theorem holds when the maximum number of temporal vertex-disjoint temporal paths is equal to 1.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2206_15251
institution arXiv
publishDate 2022
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Menger's Theorem for Temporal Paths (Not Walks)
Ibiapina, Allen
Lopes, Raul
Marino, Andrea
Silva, Ana
Discrete Mathematics
Combinatorics
A (directed) temporal graph is a (directed) graph whose edges are available only at specific times during its (discretized) lifetime $τ$. In this setting, we ask that walks respect the temporal aspect by defining $\textit{temporal walks}$ as sequences of adjacent edges whose appearing times are either strictly increasing or non-decreasing (here called non-strict), depending on the scenario. The notion of disjointness between walks is also not unique: two walks are $\textit{vertex-disjoint}$ if they do not share a vertex, and are $\textit{temporal vertex-disjoint}$ if they do not share a vertex at the same time. Thus a $\textit{temporal path}$ is a temporal walk where no repetition of vertices, at any time, is allowed. This is an important distinction that separates the interpretation of our results from those of previous works on the topic. In this paper we focus on various questions regarding connectivity (maximum number of disjoint paths) and robustness (minimum size of a cut) between a given pair of vertices. Such problems are related to the well-known Menger's Theorem on static graphs. We explore all possible interpretations of such problems, according to vertex and temporal vertex-disjointness, strict and non-strict temporal paths, and directed and undirected temporal graphs. We present a number of new results, the main of which states that Menger's Theorem holds when the maximum number of temporal vertex-disjoint temporal paths is equal to 1.
title Menger's Theorem for Temporal Paths (Not Walks)
topic Discrete Mathematics
Combinatorics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2206.15251