Related papers: How quickly can you pack short paths? Engineering …

We introduce and study the complexity of Path Packing. Given a graph $G$ and a list of paths, the task is to embed the paths edge-disjoint in $G$. This generalizes the well known Hamiltonian-Path problem. Since Hamiltonian Path is…

We examine the possibility of approximating Maximum Vertex-Disjoint Shortest Paths. In this problem, the input is an edge-weighted (directed or undirected) $n$-vertex graph $G$ along with $k$ terminal pairs…

We revisit the Maximum Node-Disjoint Paths problem, the natural optimization version of Node-Disjoint Paths, where we are given a graph $G$, $k$ pairs of vertices $(s_i, t_i)$ and an integer $\ell$, and are asked whether there exist at…

In the Disjoint Shortest Paths problem one is given a graph $G$ and a set $\mathcal{T}=\{(s_1,t_1),\dots,(s_k,t_k)\}$ of $k$ vertex pairs. The question is whether there exist vertex-disjoint paths $P_1,\dots,P_k$ in $G$ so that each $P_i$…

Cycle packing is a fundamental problem in optimization, graph theory, and algorithms. Motivated by recent advancements in finding vertex-disjoint paths between a specified set of vertices that either minimize the total length of the paths…

Given a graph $G=(V,E)$, two vertices $s,t\in V$, and two integers $k,\ell$, the Short Secluded Path problem is to find a simple $s$-$t$-path with at most $k$ vertices and $\ell$ neighbors. We study the parameterized complexity of the…

Given a graph $G=(V,E)$ and a set $T=\{ (s_i, t_i) : 1\leq i\leq k \}\subseteq V\times V$ of $k$ pairs, the $k$-vertex-disjoint-paths (resp. $k$-edge-disjoint-paths) problem asks to determine whether there exist~$k$ pairwise vertex-disjoint…

We introduce a graph partitioning problem motivated by computational topology and propose two algorithms that produce approximate solutions. Specifically, given a weighted, undirected graph $G$ and a positive integer $k$, we desire to find…

For two positive integers $k$ and $\ell$, a $(k \times \ell)$-spindle is the union of $k$ pairwise internally vertex-disjoint directed paths with $\ell$ arcs between two vertices $u$ and $v$. We are interested in the (parameterized)…

We consider the Shortest Odd Path problem, where given an undirected graph $G$, a weight function on its edges, and two vertices $s$ and $t$ in $G$, the aim is to find an $(s,t)$-path with odd length and, among all such paths, of minimum…

Given an undirected $n$-vertex graph and $k$ pairs of terminal vertices $(s_1,t_1), \ldots, (s_k,t_k)$, the $k$-Disjoint Shortest Paths ($k$-DSP)-problem asks whether there are $k$ pairwise vertex-disjoint paths $P_1,\ldots, P_k$ such that…

We consider several problems related to packing forests in graphs. The first one is to find $k$ edge-disjoint forests in a directed graph $G$ of maximal size such that the indegree of each vertex in these forests is at most $k$. We describe…

In the Disjoint Paths problem, the input consists of an $n$-vertex graph $G$ and a collection of $k$ vertex pairs, $\{(s_i,t_i)\}_{i=1}^k$, and the objective is to determine whether there exists a collection $\{P_i\}_{i=1}^k$ of $k$…

In the k-Disjoint Shortest Paths problem, a set of terminal pairs of vertices $\{(s_i,t_i)\mid 1\le i\le k\}$ is given and we are asked to find paths $P_1,\ldots,P_k$ such that each path $P_i$ is a shortest path from $s_i$ to $t_i$ and…

Given a graph $G = (V,E)$, $A \subseteq V$, and integers $k$ and $\ell$, the \textsc{$(A,\ell)$-Path Packing} problem asks to find $k$ vertex-disjoint paths of length $\ell$ that have endpoints in $A$ and internal points in $V \setminus A$.…

The $k$-Detour problem is a basic path-finding problem: given a graph $G$ on $n$ vertices, with specified nodes $s$ and $t$, and a positive integer $k$, the goal is to determine if $G$ has an $st$-path of length exactly $\text{dist}(s, t) +…

The problem of finding multiple simple shortest paths in a weighted directed graph $G=(V,E)$ has many applications, and is considerably more difficult than the corresponding problem when cycles are allowed in the paths. Even for a single…

We consider the following natural "above guarantee" parameterization of the classical Longest Path problem: For given vertices s and t of a graph G, and an integer k, the problem Longest Detour asks for an (s,t)-path in G that is at least k…

Let v(G) be the number of vertices and t(G,k) the maximum number of disjoint k-edge trees in G. In this paper we show that (a1) if G is a graph with every vertex of degree at least two and at most s, where s > 3, then t(G,2) is at least…

This paper investigates the complexity of finding secluded paths in graphs. We focus on the \textsc{Short Secluded Path} problem and a natural new variant we introduce, \textsc{Shortest Secluded Path}. Formally, given an undirected graph…