English

Solving systems of linear equations through zero forcing set and application to lights out

Data Structures and Algorithms 2022-08-23 v1

Abstract

Let F\mathbb{F} be any field, we consider solving Ax=bAx=b repeatedly for a matrix AFn×nA\in\mathbb{F}^{n\times n} of mm non-zero elements, and multiple different bFnb\in\mathbb{F}^{n}. If we are given a zero forcing set of AA of size kk, we can then build a data structure in O(mk)O(mk) time, such that each instance of Ax=bAx=b can be solved in O(k2+m)O(k^2+m) time. As an application, we show how the lights out game in an n×nn\times n grid is solved in O(n3)O(n^3) time, and then improve the running time to O(nωlogn)O(n^\omega\log n) by exploiting the repeated structure in grids.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2208.09731,
  title  = {Solving systems of linear equations through zero forcing set and application to lights out},
  author = {Jianbo Wang and Chao Xu and Siyun Zhou},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2208.09731},
  year   = {2022}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-25T01:50:31.367Z