Tree Containment Parameterized by Scanwidth

Fuente: arXiv
Enregistré dans:
Détails bibliographiques
Auteurs principaux: van Iersel, Leo, Jones, Mark, Weller, Mathias
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2026
Sujets:
Accès en ligne:
Tags: Ajouter un tag
Pas de tags, Soyez le premier à ajouter un tag!
_version_ 1866916064904871936
author van Iersel, Leo
Jones, Mark
Weller, Mathias
author_facet van Iersel, Leo
Jones, Mark
Weller, Mathias
contents TREE CONTAINMENT is a central decision problem in mathematical phylogenetics, asking whether a given rooted phylogenetic tree is embeddable in ("displayed by") a given rooted phylogenetic network. While the problem is NP-complete for general networks, many algorithmic advances have relied on structural parameters that capture how "tree-like" a network is. In this paper we investigate TREE CONTAINMENT under the structural parameter scanwidth, a directed width measure generalizing popular parameters measuring tree-likeness of phylogenetic networks. We first present a parameterized algorithm that solves the problem in $O(4^{k + k\log{k}} n + nm^2)$ time, where $n$ and $m$ are the numbers of nodes and arcs in the network and $k$ is the width of a given tree-extension. Complementing this upper bound, we prove a matching lower bound under the Exponential-Time Hypothesis (ETH), showing that there is no algorithm for TREE CONTAINMENT that runs in $2^{o(c\log{c})} n^{O(1)}$ time, even on binary inputs, where $c$ is the directed cutwidth of the input network, which upper-bounds the scanwidth $k$.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_31071
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Tree Containment Parameterized by Scanwidth
van Iersel, Leo
Jones, Mark
Weller, Mathias
Data Structures and Algorithms
Computational Complexity
Populations and Evolution
68W05
F.2.2
TREE CONTAINMENT is a central decision problem in mathematical phylogenetics, asking whether a given rooted phylogenetic tree is embeddable in ("displayed by") a given rooted phylogenetic network. While the problem is NP-complete for general networks, many algorithmic advances have relied on structural parameters that capture how "tree-like" a network is. In this paper we investigate TREE CONTAINMENT under the structural parameter scanwidth, a directed width measure generalizing popular parameters measuring tree-likeness of phylogenetic networks. We first present a parameterized algorithm that solves the problem in $O(4^{k + k\log{k}} n + nm^2)$ time, where $n$ and $m$ are the numbers of nodes and arcs in the network and $k$ is the width of a given tree-extension. Complementing this upper bound, we prove a matching lower bound under the Exponential-Time Hypothesis (ETH), showing that there is no algorithm for TREE CONTAINMENT that runs in $2^{o(c\log{c})} n^{O(1)}$ time, even on binary inputs, where $c$ is the directed cutwidth of the input network, which upper-bounds the scanwidth $k$.
title Tree Containment Parameterized by Scanwidth
topic Data Structures and Algorithms
Computational Complexity
Populations and Evolution
68W05
F.2.2
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.31071