English

A King in every two consecutive tournaments

Combinatorics 2019-10-23 v1 Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing

Abstract

We think of a tournament T=([n],E)T=([n], E) as a communication network where in each round of communication processor PiP_i sends its information to PjP_j, for every directed edge ijE(T)ij \in E(T). By Landau's theorem (1953) there is a King in TT, i.e., a processor whose initial input reaches every other processor in two rounds or less. Namely, a processor PνP_{\nu} such that after two rounds of communication along TT's edges, the initial information of PνP_{\nu} reaches all other processors. Here we consider a more general scenario where an adversary selects an arbitrary series of tournaments T1,T2,T_1, T_2,\ldots, so that in each round s=1,2,s=1, 2, \ldots, communication is governed by the corresponding tournament TsT_s. We prove that for every series of tournaments that the adversary selects, it is still true that after two rounds of communication, the initial input of at least one processor reaches everyone. Concretely, we show that for every two tournaments T1,T2T_1, T_2 there is a vertex in [n][n] that can reach all vertices via (i) A step in T1T_1, or (ii) A step in T2T_2 or (iii) A step in T1T_1 followed by a step in T2T_2. }

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1910.09684,
  title  = {A King in every two consecutive tournaments},
  author = {Yehuda Afek and Eli Gafni and Nati Linial},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1910.09684},
  year   = {2019}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-23T11:50:38.644Z