A Complete Anytime Algorithm for Treewidth

TL;DR

This paper introduces QuickBB, a novel branch and bound algorithm for computing graph treewidth that outperforms previous methods in efficiency and provides better bounds, especially on complex graphs.

Contribution

The paper presents a new algorithm called QuickBB with innovative pruning and propagation techniques, and a new lower bound method called minor-min-width, advancing treewidth computation.

Findings

QuickBB outperforms existing algorithms in CPU time on benchmark graphs.

QuickBB provides improved upper bounds on treewidth for complex graphs.

The minor-min-width lower bound enhances the efficiency of the branch and bound process.

Abstract

In this paper, we present a Branch and Bound algorithm called QuickBB for computing the treewidth of an undirected graph. This algorithm performs a search in the space of perfect elimination ordering of vertices of the graph. The algorithm uses novel pruning and propagation techniques which are derived from the theory of graph minors and graph isomorphism. We present a new algorithm called minor-min-width for computing a lower bound on treewidth that is used within the branch and bound algorithm and which improves over earlier available lower bounds. Empirical evaluation of QuickBB on randomly generated graphs and benchmarks in Graph Coloring and Bayesian Networks shows that it is consistently better than complete algorithms like QuickTree [Shoikhet and Geiger, 1997] in terms of cpu time. QuickBB also has good anytime performance, being able to generate a better upper bound on treewidth of some graphs whose optimal treewidth could not be computed up to now.