Multipacking on graphs and Euclidean metric space
Abstract
A \emph{multipacking} in an undirected graph is a set such that for every vertex and for every integer , the ball of radius around contains at most vertices of . The \textsc{Multipacking} problem asks whether a graph contains a multipacking of size at least . For more than a decade, it remained open whether \textsc{Multipacking} is \textsc{NP-complete} or polynomial-time solvable, although it is known to be polynomial-time solvable for some classes (e.g., strongly chordal graphs and grids). Foucaud, Gras, Perez, and Sikora [\textit{Algorithmica} 2021] showed it is \textsc{NP-complete} for directed graphs and \textsc{W[1]-hard} when parameterized by the solution size. We resolve the open question by proving \textsc{Multipacking} is \textsc{NP-complete} for undirected graphs and \textsc{W[2]-hard} when parameterized by the solution size. Furthermore, we show it remains \textsc{NP-complete} and \textsc{W[2]-hard} even for chordal, bipartite, claw-free, regular, CONV, and chordal-hyperbolic graphs (a superclass of strongly chordal graphs), and we provide approximation algorithms for cactus, chordal, and -hyperbolic graphs. Moreover, we study the relationship between multipacking number and broadcast domination number for cactus, chordal, and -hyperbolic graphs. Further, we prove that for all , \textsc{-Multipacking} is \textsc{NP-complete} even for planar bipartite graphs with bounded degree, and also for bounded-diameter chordal and bounded-diameter bipartite graphs. For geometric variants, in a maximum -multipacking can be computed in polynomial time, but computing a maximum -multipacking is \textsc{NP-hard}, and we provide approximation and parameterized algorithms for the -multipacking problem.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2602.07927,
title = {Multipacking on graphs and Euclidean metric space},
author = {Sk Samim Islam},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.07927},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
Doctoral Thesis