English

Adapting the Bron-Kerbosch Algorithm for Enumerating Maximal Cliques in Temporal Graphs

Data Structures and Algorithms 2017-05-03 v2 Computational Complexity Social and Information Networks

Abstract

Dynamics of interactions play an increasingly important role in the analysis of complex networks. A modeling framework to capture this are temporal graphs which consist of a set of vertices (entities in the network) and a set of time-stamped binary interactions between the vertices. We focus on enumerating delta-cliques, an extension of the concept of cliques to temporal graphs: for a given time period delta, a delta-clique in a temporal graph is a set of vertices and a time interval such that all vertices interact with each other at least after every delta time steps within the time interval. Viard, Latapy, and Magnien [ASONAM 2015, TCS 2016] proposed a greedy algorithm for enumerating all maximal delta-cliques in temporal graphs. In contrast to this approach, we adapt the Bron-Kerbosch algorithm - an efficient, recursive backtracking algorithm which enumerates all maximal cliques in static graphs - to the temporal setting. We obtain encouraging results both in theory (concerning worst-case running time analysis based on the parameter "delta-slice degeneracy" of the underlying graph) as well as in practice with experiments on real-world data. The latter culminates in an improvement for most interesting delte-values concerning running time in comparison with the algorithm of Viard, Latapy, and Magnien.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1605.03871,
  title  = {Adapting the Bron-Kerbosch Algorithm for Enumerating Maximal Cliques in Temporal Graphs},
  author = {Anne-Sophie Himmel and Hendrik Molter and Rolf Niedermeier and Manuel Sorge},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1605.03871},
  year   = {2017}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-22T13:59:31.343Z