On complexity of substructure connectivity and restricted connectivity of graphs

TL;DR

This paper investigates various generalized connectivity measures of graphs, proving that determining these connectivity parameters is NP-complete, thus highlighting their computational complexity.

Contribution

It establishes the NP-completeness of computing structure, substructure, restricted, and $R^h$-restricted connectivity in graphs, extending the understanding of their computational difficulty.

Findings

Proves NP-completeness of structure connectivity

Proves NP-completeness of substructure connectivity

Proves NP-completeness of restricted and $R^h$-restricted connectivity

Abstract

The connectivity of a graph is an important parameter to evaluate its reliability. $k$-restricted connectivity (resp. $R^h$-restricted connectivity) of a graph $G$ is the minimum cardinality of a set $S$ of vertices in $G$, if exists, whose deletion disconnects $G$ and leaves each component of $G-S$ with more than $k$ vertices (resp. $\delta(G-S)\geq h$). In contrast, structure (substructure) connectivity of $G$ is defined as the minimum number of vertex-disjoint subgraphs whose deletion disconnects $G$. As generalizations of the concept of connectivity, structure (substructure) connectivity, restricted connectivity and $R^h$-restricted connectivity have been extensively studied from the combinatorial point of view. Very little is known about the computational complexity of these variants, except for the recently established NP-completeness of $k$-restricted edge-connectivity. In this paper, we prove that the problems of determining structure, substructure, restricted, and $R^h$-restricted connectivity are all NP-complete.