English

On the complexity of computing Strahler numbers

Computational Complexity 2025-12-23 v1 Formal Languages and Automata Theory

Abstract

It is shown that the problem of computing the Strahler number of a binary tree given as a term is complete for the circuit complexity class uniform NC1\mathsf{NC}^1. For several variants, where the binary tree is given by a pointer structure or in a succinct form by a directed acyclic graph or a tree straight-line program, the complexity of computing the Strahler number is determined as well. The problem, whether a given context-free grammar in Chomsky normal form produces a derivation tree (resp., an acyclic derivation tree), whose Strahler number is at least a given number kk is shown to be P-complete (resp., PSPACE-complete).

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2512.19060,
  title  = {On the complexity of computing Strahler numbers},
  author = {Moses Ganardi and Markus Lohrey},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.19060},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

accepted for STACS 2026

R2 v1 2026-07-01T08:36:14.185Z