Safe Edges: A Study of Triangulation in Fill-in and Tree-Width Problems

TL;DR

This paper explores structural properties of triangulation problems, introduces a new safe edge concept for Min Fill-In, and investigates conditions for a single triangulation to optimize both Min Fill-In and Treewidth.

Contribution

It extends the safe edge concept, develops a new reduction tool for Min Fill-In, and introduces a parameter to analyze triangulations optimizing both problems.

Findings

New safe edge condition for Min Fill-In

A novel reduction tool for Min Fill-In

Initial results on triangulations optimizing both problems

Abstract

This paper considers two well-studied problems \textsc{Minimum Fill-In} (\textsc{Min Fill-In}) and \textsc{Treewidth}. Since both problems are \textsf{NP}-hard, various reduction rules simplifying an input graph have been intensively studied to better understand the structural properties relevant to these problems. Bodlaender at el. introduced the concept of a safe edge that is included in a solution of the \textsc{Minimum Fill-In} problem and showed some initial results. In this paper, we extend their result and prove a new condition for an edge set to be safe. This in turn helps us to construct a novel reduction tool for \textsc{Min Fill-In} that we use to answer other questions related to the problem. In this paper, we also study another interesting research question: Whether there exists a triangulation that answers both problems \textsc{Min Fill-In} and \textsc{Treewidth}. To formalise our study, we introduce a new parameter reflecting a distance of triangulations optimising both problems. We present some initial results regarding this parameter and study graph classes where both problems can be solved with one triangulation.