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We abstract and study reachability preservers, a graph-theoretic primitive that has been implicit in prior work on network design. Given a directed graph G=(V,E) and a set of demand pairs P⊆VxV, a reachability preserver is a sparse subgraph H that preserves reachability between all demand pairs. Our first contribution is a series of extremal bounds on the size of reachability preservers. Our main result states that, for an n-node graph and demand pairs of the form P⊆SxV for a small node subset S, there is always a reachability preserver on O(n+√n/P//S/) edges. We additionally give a lower bound construction demonstrating that this upper bound characterizes the settings in which O(n) size reachability preservers are generally possible, in a large range of parameters. The second contribution of this paper is a new connection between extremal graph sparsification results and classical Steiner Network Design problems. Surprisingly, prior to this work, the osmosis of techniques between these two fields had been superficial. This allows us to improve the state of the art approximation algorithms for the most basic Steiner-type problem in directed graphs from the O(n0.6+ε) of Chlamatac, et al. [Approximating spanners and directed steiner forest: Upper and lower bounds, in Proceedings of the Twenty-Eighth Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms, SIAM, Philadelphia, 2017, pp. 534-443] (n4/7+ε). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the dynamic minimum set cover problem, the challenge is to minimize the update time while guaranteeing a close-to-optimal min\{ O(log n), f\} approximation factor. (Throughout, n, m, f, and C are parameters denoting the maximum number of elements, the number of sets, the frequency, and the cost range.) In the high-frequency range, when f = \Omega (log n), this was achieved by a deterministic O(log n)-approximation algorithm with O(f log n) amortized update time by Gupta et al. [Online and dynamic algorithms for set cover, in Proceedings STOC 2017, ACM, pp. 537--550]. In this paper we consider the low-frequency range, when f =O(log n), and obtain deterministic algorithms with a (1 + \epsilon)f-approximation ratio and the following guarantees on the update time. (1) O((f/\epsilon) \cdot log(Cn)) amortized update time: Prior to our work, the best approximation ratio guaranteed by deterministic algorithms was O(f2) of Bhattacharya, Henzinger, and Italiano [Design of dynamic algorithms via primal-dual method, in Proceedings ICALP 2015, Springer, pp. 206--218]. In contrast, the only result with O(f)-approximation was that of Abboud et al. [Dynamic set cover: Improved algorithms and lower bounds, in Proceedings STOC 2019, ACM, pp. 114--125], who designed a randomized (1+\epsilon)f-approximation algorithm with O((f2/\epsilon) \cdot log n) amortized update time. (2) O \bigl(f2/\epsilon 3 + (f/\epsilon 2) \cdot logC \bigr) amortized update time: This result improves the above update time bound for most values of f in the low-frequency range, i.e., f =o(log n). It is also the first result that is independent of m and n. It subsumes the constant amortized update time of Bhattacharya and Kulkarni [Deterministically maintaining a (2 + \epsilon)-approximate minimum vertex cover in O(1/\epsilon 2) amortized update time, in Proceedings SODA 2019, SIAM, pp. 1872--1885] for unweighted dynamic vertex cover (i.e., when f = 2 and C = 1). (3) O((f/\epsilon 3) \cdot log2(Cn)) worst-case update time: No nontrivial worst-case update time was previously known for the dynamic set cover problem. Our bound subsumes and improves by a logarithmic factor the O(log3 n/\sansp \sanso \sansl \sansy (\epsilon)) worst-case update time for the unweighted dynamic vertex cover problem (i.e., when f = 2 and C = 1) of Bhattacharya, Henzinger, and Nanongkai [Fully dynamic approximate maximum matching and minimum vertex cover in O(log3)n worst case update time, in Proceedings SODA 2017, SIAM, pp. 470--489]. We achieve our results via the primal-dual approach, by maintaining a fractional packing solution as a dual certificate. Prior work in dynamic algorithms that employs the primal-dual approach uses a local update scheme that maintains relaxed complementary slackness conditions for every set. For our first result we use instead a global update scheme that does not always maintain complementary slackness conditions. For our second result we combine the global and the local update schema. To achieve our third result we use a hierarchy of background schedulers. It is an interesting open question whether this background scheduler technique can also be used to transform algorithms with amortized running time bounds into algorithms with worst-case running time bounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate offline and online algorithms for Round - UFPP , the problem of minimizing the number of rounds required to schedule a set of unsplittable flows of non-uniform size on a given path with heterogeneous edge capacities. Round - UFPP is known to be NP-hard and there are constant-factor approximation algorithms under the no bottleneck assumption (NBA), which stipulates that maximum size of any flow is at most the minimum global edge capacity. In this work, we present improved online and offline algorithms for Round - UFPP without the NBA. We first study offline Round - UFPP for a restricted class of instances, called α -small, where the size of each flow is at most α times the capacity of its bottleneck edge, and present an O (log (1 / (1 - α))) -approximation algorithm. Next, our main result is an online O (log log c max) -competitive algorithm for Round - UFPP where c max is the largest edge capacity, improving upon the previous best bound of O (log c max) due to Epstein et al. (SIAM J Discrete Math 23(2):822–841, 2009). These new results lead to an offline O (min (log n , log m , log log c max)) -approximation algorithm and an online O (min (log m , log log c max)) -competitive algorithm for Round - UFPP , where n is the number of flows and m is the number of edges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The terminal backup problems ([E. Anshelevich and A. Karagiozova, SIAM J. Comput., 40 (2011), pp. 678--708]) form a class of network design problems: Given an undirected graph with a requirement on terminals, the goal is to find a minimum-cost subgraph satisfying the connectivity requirement. The node-connectivity terminal backup problem requires a terminal to connect other terminals with a number of node-disjoint paths. This problem is not known whether is NP-hard or tractable. Fukunaga [SIAM J. Discrete Math., 30 (2016), pp. 777--800] gave a 4/3-approximation algorithm based on an LP-rounding scheme using a general LP-solver. In this paper, we develop a combinatorial algorithm for the relaxed LP to find a half-integral optimal solution in O(mlog(n-A · MF(/cn,m T/c2n)) time, where n is the number of nodes, m is the number of edges, k is the number of terminals, A is the maximum edge-cost, U is the maximum edge-capacity, and MF(nz,mz) is the time complexity of a max-flow algorithm in a network with nz nodes and m' edges. The algorithm implies that the 4/3-approximation algorithm for the node-connectivity terminal backup problem is also efficiently implemented. For the design of algorithm, we explore a connection between the node-connectivity terminal backup problem and a new type of a multiflow, which is called a separately capacitated multiflow. We show a min-max theorem which extends the Lovasz-Cherkassky theorem to the node-capacity setting. Our results build on discrete convexity in the node-connectivity terminal backup problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we derive a new recovery procedure for the reconstruction of extended exponential sums of the form y (t) = ∑ j = 1 M (∑ m = 0 n j γ j , m t m) e 2 π λ j t , where the frequency parameters λ j ∈ ℂ are pairwise distinct. In order to reconstruct y(t) we employ a finite set of classical Fourier coefficients of y with regard to a finite interval (0 , P) ⊂ ℝ with P > 0. For our method, 2N + 2 Fourier coefficients c k (y) are sufficient to recover all parameters of y, where N : = ∑ j = 1 M (1 + n j) denotes the order of y(t). The recovery is based on the observation that for λ j ∉ i P ℤ the terms of y(t) possess Fourier coefficients with rational structure. We employ a recently proposed stable iterative rational approximation algorithm in [Y. Nakatsukasa, O. Sète and L. N. Trefethen, The AAA Algorithm for rational approximation, SIAM J. Sci. Comput.40(3) (2018) A1494A1522]. If a sufficiently large set of L Fourier coefficients of y is available (i.e. L ≥ 2 N + 2), then our recovery method automatically detects the number M of terms of y, the multiplicities n j for j = 1 , ... , M , as well as all parameters λ j , j = 1 , ... , M , and γ j , m , j = 1 , ... , M , m = 0 , ... , n j , determining y(t). Therefore, our method provides a new stable alternative to the known numerical approaches for the recovery of exponential sums that are based on Prony's method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inspired by the seminal works of Khuller et al. (SIAM J. Comput. 25(2), 355–368 (1996)) and Chan (Discrete Comput. Geom. 32(2), 177–194 (2004)) we study the bottleneck version of the Euclidean bounded-degree spanning tree problem. A bottleneck spanning tree is a spanning tree whose largest edge-length is minimum, and a bottleneck degree-K spanning tree is a degree-K spanning tree whose largest edge-length is minimum. Let β K be the supremum ratio of the largest edge-length of the bottleneck degree-K spanning tree to the largest edge-length of the bottleneck spanning tree, over all finite point sets in the Euclidean plane. It is known that β 5 = 1 , and it is easy to verify that β 2 ⩾ 2 , β 3 ⩾ 2 , and β 4 > 1.175 . It is implied by the Hamiltonicity of the cube of the bottleneck spanning tree that β 2 ⩽ 3 . The degree-3 spanning tree algorithm of Ravi et al. (25th Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing, pp. 438–447. ACM, New York (1993)) implies that β 3 ⩽ 2 . Andersen and Ras (Networks 68(4), 302–314 (2016)) showed that β 4 ⩽ 3 . We present the following improved bounds: β 2 ⩾ 7 , β 3 ⩽ 3 , and β 4 ⩽ 2 . As a result, we obtain better approximation algorithms for Euclidean bottleneck degree-3 and degree-4 spanning trees. As parts of our proofs of these bounds we present some structural properties of the Euclidean minimum spanning tree which are of independent interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]