Related papers: Lower Bounds for Local Approximation

Locally Checkable Labeling (LCL) problems include essentially all the classic problems of $\mathsf{LOCAL}$ distributed algorithms. In a recent enlightening revelation, Chang and Pettie [arXiv 1704.06297] showed that any LCL (on bounded…

Very recently, Khoury and Schild [FOCS 2025] showed that any randomized LOCAL algorithm that solves maximal matching requires $\Omega(\min\{\log \Delta, \log_\Delta n\})$ rounds, where $n$ is the number of nodes in the graph and $\Delta$ is…

Consider the following "local" cut-detection problem in a directed graph: We are given a seed vertex $x$ and need to remove at most $k$ edges so that at most $\nu$ edges can be reached from $x$ (a "local" cut) or output $\bot$ to indicate…

Motivated by the increasing need to understand the distributed algorithmic foundations of large-scale graph computations, we study some fundamental graph problems in a message-passing model for distributed computing where $k \geq 2$…

Say that an edge of a graph $G$ dominates itself and every other edge adjacent to it. An edge dominating set of a graph $G=(V,E)$ is a subset of edges $E' \subseteq E$ which dominates all edges of $G$. In particular, if every edge of $G$ is…

We prove essentially tight lower bounds, conditionally to the Exponential Time Hypothesis, for two fundamental but seemingly very different cutting problems on surface-embedded graphs: the Shortest Cut Graph problem and the Multiway Cut…

Coloring unit-disk graphs efficiently is an important problem in the global and distributed setting, with applications in radio channel assignment problems when the communication relies on omni-directional antennas of the same power. In…

In this paper, we consider two fundamental cut approximation problems on large graphs. We prove new lower bounds for both problems that are optimal up to logarithmic factors. The first problem is to approximate cuts in balanced directed…

We consider the Backup Placement problem in networks in the $\mathcal{CONGEST}$ distributed setting. Given a network graph $G = (V,E)$, the goal of each vertex $v \in V$ is selecting a neighbor, such that the maximum number of vertices in…

We consider a connected undirected graph $G(n,m)$ with $n$ nodes and $m$ edges. A $k$-dominating set $D$ in $G$ is a set of nodes having the property that every node in $G$ is at most $k$ edges away from at least one node in $D$. Finding a…

In this paper we show a new algorithm for the decremental single-source reachability problem in directed planar graphs. It processes any sequence of edge deletions in $O(n\log^2{n}\log\log{n})$ total time and explicitly maintains the set of…

Numerous problems consisting in identifying vertices in graphs using distances are useful in domains such as network verification and graph isomorphism. Unifying them into a meta-problem may be of main interest. We introduce here a…

Let $G$ be an undirected graph. An edge of $G$ dominates itself and all edges adjacent to it. A subset $E'$ of edges of $G$ is an edge dominating set of $G$, if every edge of the graph is dominated by some edge of $E'$. We say that $E'$ is…

The question of what can be computed, and how efficiently, are at the core of computer science. Not surprisingly, in distributed systems and networking research, an equally fundamental question is what can be computed in a…

In the semi-streaming model, an algorithm must process any $n$-vertex graph by making one or few passes over a stream of its edges, use $O(n \cdot \text{polylog }n)$ words of space, and at the end of the last pass, output a solution to the…

Brooks' theorem states that all connected graphs but odd cycles and cliques can be colored with $\Delta$ colors, where $\Delta$ is the maximum degree of the graph. Such colorings have been shown to admit non-trivial distributed algorithms…

A dominating set of a graph $G=(V,E)$ is a subset of vertices $S\subseteq V$ such that every vertex $v\in V\setminus S$ has at least one neighbor in set $S$. The corresponding optimization problem is known to be NP-hard. The best known…

We develop a general deterministic distributed method for locally rounding fractional solutions of graph problems for which the analysis can be broken down into analyzing pairs of vertices. Roughly speaking, the method can transform…

In the minimum planarization problem, given some $n$-vertex graph, the goal is to find a set of vertices of minimum cardinality whose removal leaves a planar graph. This is a fundamental problem in topological graph theory. We present a…

The Maximal Independent Set (MIS) problem is one of the basics in the study of locality in distributed graph algorithms. This paper presents an extremely simple randomized algorithm providing a near-optimal local complexity for this…