Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Fernau, Henning, Mann, Kevin
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.08798
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866914031496855552
author Fernau, Henning
Mann, Kevin
author_facet Fernau, Henning
Mann, Kevin
contents Different variations of alliances in graphs have been introduced into the graph-theoretic literature about twenty years ago. More broadly speaking, they can be interpreted as groups that collaborate to achieve a common goal, for instance, defending themselves against possible attacks from outside. In this paper, we initiate the study of reconfiguring alliances. This means that, with the understanding of having an interconnection map given by a graph, we look at two alliances of the same size~$k$ and investigate if there is a reconfiguration sequence (of length at most~$\ell$) formed by alliances of size (at most)~$k$ that transfers one alliance into the other one. Here, we consider different (now classical) movements of tokens: sliding, jumping, addition/removal. We link the latter two regimes by introducing the concept of reconfiguration monotonicity. Concerning classical complexity, most of these reconfiguration problems are \textsf{PSPACE}-complete, although some are solvable in \textsf{Log\-SPACE}. We also consider these reconfiguration questions through the lense of parameterized algorithms and prove various \textsf{FPT}-results, in particular concerning the combined parameter $k+\ell$ or neighborhood diversity together with $k$ or neighborhood diversity together with $k$.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_08798
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle How to Reconfigure Your Alliances
Fernau, Henning
Mann, Kevin
Computational Complexity
Discrete Mathematics
Different variations of alliances in graphs have been introduced into the graph-theoretic literature about twenty years ago. More broadly speaking, they can be interpreted as groups that collaborate to achieve a common goal, for instance, defending themselves against possible attacks from outside. In this paper, we initiate the study of reconfiguring alliances. This means that, with the understanding of having an interconnection map given by a graph, we look at two alliances of the same size~$k$ and investigate if there is a reconfiguration sequence (of length at most~$\ell$) formed by alliances of size (at most)~$k$ that transfers one alliance into the other one. Here, we consider different (now classical) movements of tokens: sliding, jumping, addition/removal. We link the latter two regimes by introducing the concept of reconfiguration monotonicity. Concerning classical complexity, most of these reconfiguration problems are \textsf{PSPACE}-complete, although some are solvable in \textsf{Log\-SPACE}. We also consider these reconfiguration questions through the lense of parameterized algorithms and prove various \textsf{FPT}-results, in particular concerning the combined parameter $k+\ell$ or neighborhood diversity together with $k$ or neighborhood diversity together with $k$.
title How to Reconfigure Your Alliances
topic Computational Complexity
Discrete Mathematics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.08798