The Parameterized Landscape of Labeled Graph Contractions

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Lafond, Manuel, Marchand, Bertrand
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Lafond, Manuel
Marchand, Bertrand
author_facet Lafond, Manuel
Marchand, Bertrand
contents In this work, we study the problem of computing a maximum common contraction of two vertex-labeled graphs, i.e. how to make them identical by contracting as little edges as possible in the two graphs. We study the problem from a parameterized complexity point of view, using parameters such as the maximum degree, the degeneracy, the clique-width or treewidth of the input graphs as well as the number of allowed contractions. We put this complexity in perspective with that of the labeled contractibility problem, i.e determining whether a labeled graph is a contraction of another. Surprisingly, our results indicate very little difference between these problems in terms of parameterized complexity status. We only prove their status to differ when parameterizing by both the degeneracy and the number of allowed contractions, showing W[1]-hardness of the maximum common contraction problem in this case, whereas the contractibility problem is FPT.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_16096
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The Parameterized Landscape of Labeled Graph Contractions
Lafond, Manuel
Marchand, Bertrand
Data Structures and Algorithms
Computational Complexity
In this work, we study the problem of computing a maximum common contraction of two vertex-labeled graphs, i.e. how to make them identical by contracting as little edges as possible in the two graphs. We study the problem from a parameterized complexity point of view, using parameters such as the maximum degree, the degeneracy, the clique-width or treewidth of the input graphs as well as the number of allowed contractions. We put this complexity in perspective with that of the labeled contractibility problem, i.e determining whether a labeled graph is a contraction of another. Surprisingly, our results indicate very little difference between these problems in terms of parameterized complexity status. We only prove their status to differ when parameterizing by both the degeneracy and the number of allowed contractions, showing W[1]-hardness of the maximum common contraction problem in this case, whereas the contractibility problem is FPT.
title The Parameterized Landscape of Labeled Graph Contractions
topic Data Structures and Algorithms
Computational Complexity
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.16096