English

Restricted optimal pebbling is NP-hard

Combinatorics 2023-01-25 v1 Computational Complexity

Abstract

Consider a distribution of pebbles on a graph. A pebbling move removes two pebbles from a vertex and place one at an adjacent vertex. A vertex is reachable under a pebble distribution if it has a pebble after the application of a sequence of pebbling moves. A pebble distribution is solvable if each vertex is reachable under it. The size of a pebble distribution is the total number of pebbles. The optimal pebbling number π(G)\pi^*(G) is the size of the smallest solvable distribution. A tt-restricted pebble distribution places at most tt pebbles at each vertex. The tt-restricted optimal pebbling number πt(G)\pi_t^*(G) is the size of the smallest solvable tt-restricted pebble distribution. We show that deciding whether π2(G)k\pi^*_2(G)\leq k is NP-complete. We prove that πt(G)=π(G)\pi_t^*(G)=\pi^*(G) if δ(G)2V(G)31\delta(G)\geq \frac{2|V(G)|}{3}-1 and we show infinitely many graphs which satisfies δ(H)12V(H)\delta(H)\approx \frac{1}{2}|V(H)| but πt(H)π(H)\pi_t^*(H)\neq\pi^*(H), where δ\delta denotes the minimum degree.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2301.09867,
  title  = {Restricted optimal pebbling is NP-hard},
  author = {László F. Papp},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2301.09867},
  year   = {2023}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-28T08:18:25.667Z