Edge exploration of temporal graphs

TL;DR

This paper explores the complexity of Eulerian circuits in temporal graphs, introduces a new parameter called interval-membership-width, and provides fixed-parameter tractable algorithms for certain temporal exploration problems.

Contribution

It establishes the NP-hardness of determining temporally Eulerian graphs under restrictions, introduces the interval-membership-width parameter, and resolves open questions on exploring temporal stars.

Findings

NP-hardness of temporal Eulerian circuit detection under restrictions

FPT-algorithm based on interval-membership-width

Resolution of open questions on exploring temporal stars

Abstract

We introduce a natural temporal analogue of Eulerian circuits and prove that, in contrast with the static case, it is NP-hard to determine whether a given temporal graph is temporally Eulerian even if strong restrictions are placed on the structure of the underlying graph and each edge is active at only three times. However, we do obtain an FPT-algorithm with respect to a new parameter called interval-membership-width which restricts the times assigned to different edges; we believe that this parameter will be of independent interest for other temporal graph problems. Our techniques also allow us to resolve two open question of Akrida, Mertzios and Spirakis [CIAC 2019] concerning a related problem of exploring temporal stars. Furthermore, we introduce a vertex-variant of interval-membership-width (which can be arbitrarily larger than its edge-counterpart) and use it to obtain an FPT-time algorithm for a natural vertex-exploration problem that remains hard even when interval-membership-width is bounded.