Approximating temporal modularity on graphs of small underlying treewidth

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Agdur, Vilhelm, Enright, Jessica, Larios-Jones, Laura, Meeks, Kitty, Skerman, Fiona, Yates, Ella
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Agdur, Vilhelm
Enright, Jessica
Larios-Jones, Laura
Meeks, Kitty
Skerman, Fiona
Yates, Ella
author_facet Agdur, Vilhelm
Enright, Jessica
Larios-Jones, Laura
Meeks, Kitty
Skerman, Fiona
Yates, Ella
contents Modularity is a very widely used measure of the level of clustering or community structure in networks. Here we consider a recent generalisation of the definition of modularity to temporal graphs, whose edge-sets change over discrete timesteps; such graphs offer a more realistic model of many real-world networks in which connections between entities (for example, between individuals in a social network) evolve over time. Computing modularity is notoriously difficult: it is NP-hard even to approximate in general, and only admits efficient exact algorithms in very restricted special cases. Our main result is that a multiplicative approximation to temporal modularity can be computed efficiently when the underlying graph has small treewidth. This generalises a similar approximation algorithm for the static case, but requires some substantially new ideas to overcome technical challenges associated with the temporal nature of the problem.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_17541
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Approximating temporal modularity on graphs of small underlying treewidth
Agdur, Vilhelm
Enright, Jessica
Larios-Jones, Laura
Meeks, Kitty
Skerman, Fiona
Yates, Ella
Combinatorics
Discrete Mathematics
Modularity is a very widely used measure of the level of clustering or community structure in networks. Here we consider a recent generalisation of the definition of modularity to temporal graphs, whose edge-sets change over discrete timesteps; such graphs offer a more realistic model of many real-world networks in which connections between entities (for example, between individuals in a social network) evolve over time. Computing modularity is notoriously difficult: it is NP-hard even to approximate in general, and only admits efficient exact algorithms in very restricted special cases. Our main result is that a multiplicative approximation to temporal modularity can be computed efficiently when the underlying graph has small treewidth. This generalises a similar approximation algorithm for the static case, but requires some substantially new ideas to overcome technical challenges associated with the temporal nature of the problem.
title Approximating temporal modularity on graphs of small underlying treewidth
topic Combinatorics
Discrete Mathematics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.17541