More Like this

1. Light Euclidean Steiner Spanners in the Plane

   https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.SoCG.2021.15  

   Bhore, Sujoy ; Toth, Csaba D. ( June 2021 , 37th International Symposium on Computational Geometry (SoCG 2021))

   null (Ed.)

   Lightness is a fundamental parameter for Euclidean spanners; it is the ratio of the spanner weight to the weight of the minimum spanning tree of a finite set of points in ℝ^d. In a recent breakthrough, Le and Solomon (2019) established the precise dependencies on ε > 0 and d ∈ ℕ of the minimum lightness of a (1+ε)-spanner, and observed that additional Steiner points can substantially improve the lightness. Le and Solomon (2020) constructed Steiner (1+ε)-spanners of lightness O(ε^{-1}logΔ) in the plane, where Δ ≥ Ω(√n) is the spread of the point set, defined as the ratio between the maximum and minimum distance between a pair of points. They also constructed spanners of lightness Õ(ε^{-(d+1)/2}) in dimensions d ≥ 3. Recently, Bhore and Tóth (2020) established a lower bound of Ω(ε^{-d/2}) for the lightness of Steiner (1+ε)-spanners in ℝ^d, for d ≥ 2. The central open problem in this area is to close the gap between the lower and upper bounds in all dimensions d ≥ 2. In this work, we show that for every finite set of points in the plane and every ε > 0, there exists a Euclidean Steiner (1+ε)-spanner of lightness O(ε^{-1}); this matches the lower bound for d = 2. We generalize the notion of shallow light trees, which may be of independent interest, and use directional spanners and a modified window partitioning scheme to achieve a tight weight analysis. 

   more » « less
2. Online Spanners in Metric Spaces

   Bhore, Sujoy ; Filtser, Arnold ; Khodabandeh, Hadi ; Toth, Csaba D. ( September 2022 , 30th Annual European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA 2022))

   Given a metric space ℳ = (X,δ), a weighted graph G over X is a metric t-spanner of ℳ if for every u,v ∈ X, δ(u,v) ≤ δ_G(u,v) ≤ t⋅ δ(u,v), where δ_G is the shortest path metric in G. In this paper, we construct spanners for finite sets in metric spaces in the online setting. Here, we are given a sequence of points (s₁, …, s_n), where the points are presented one at a time (i.e., after i steps, we have seen S_i = {s₁, … , s_i}). The algorithm is allowed to add edges to the spanner when a new point arrives, however, it is not allowed to remove any edge from the spanner. The goal is to maintain a t-spanner G_i for S_i for all i, while minimizing the number of edges, and their total weight. Under the L₂-norm in ℝ^d for arbitrary constant d ∈ ℕ, we present an online (1+ε)-spanner algorithm with competitive ratio O_d(ε^{-d} log n), improving the previous bound of O_d(ε^{-(d+1)}log n). Moreover, the spanner maintained by the algorithm has O_d(ε^{1-d}log ε^{-1})⋅ n edges, almost matching the (offline) optimal bound of O_d(ε^{1-d})⋅ n. In the plane, a tighter analysis of the same algorithm provides an almost quadratic improvement of the competitive ratio to O(ε^{-3/2}logε^{-1}log n), by comparing the online spanner with an instance-optimal spanner directly, bypassing the comparison to an MST (i.e., lightness). As a counterpart, we design a sequence of points that yields a Ω_d(ε^{-d}) lower bound for the competitive ratio for online (1+ε)-spanner algorithms in ℝ^d under the L₁-norm. Then we turn our attention to online spanners in general metrics. Note that, it is not possible to obtain a spanner with stretch less than 3 with a subquadratic number of edges, even in the offline setting, for general metrics. We analyze an online version of the celebrated greedy spanner algorithm, dubbed ordered greedy. With stretch factor t = (2k-1)(1+ε) for k ≥ 2 and ε ∈ (0,1), we show that it maintains a spanner with O(ε^{-1}logε^{-1})⋅ n^{1+1/k} edges and O(ε^{-1}n^{1/k}log² n) lightness for a sequence of n points in a metric space. We show that these bounds cannot be significantly improved, by introducing an instance that achieves an Ω(1/k⋅ n^{1/k}) competitive ratio on both sparsity and lightness. Furthermore, we establish the trade-off among stretch, number of edges and lightness for points in ultrametrics, showing that one can maintain a (2+ε)-spanner for ultrametrics with O(ε^{-1}logε^{-1})⋅ n edges and O(ε^{-2}) lightness. 

   more » « less
3. Online Spanners in Metric Spaces

   Bhore, Sujoy ; Filtser, Arnold ; Khodabandeh, Hadi ; Toth, Csaba D. ( September 2022 , Proc. 30th Annual European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA))

   Given a metric space ℳ = (X,δ), a weighted graph G over X is a metric t-spanner of ℳ if for every u,v ∈ X, δ(u,v) ≤ δ_G(u,v) ≤ t⋅ δ(u,v), where δ_G is the shortest path metric in G. In this paper, we construct spanners for finite sets in metric spaces in the online setting. Here, we are given a sequence of points (s₁, …, s_n), where the points are presented one at a time (i.e., after i steps, we have seen S_i = {s₁, … , s_i}). The algorithm is allowed to add edges to the spanner when a new point arrives, however, it is not allowed to remove any edge from the spanner. The goal is to maintain a t-spanner G_i for S_i for all i, while minimizing the number of edges, and their total weight. Under the L₂-norm in ℝ^d for arbitrary constant d ∈ ℕ, we present an online (1+ε)-spanner algorithm with competitive ratio O_d(ε^{-d} log n), improving the previous bound of O_d(ε^{-(d+1)}log n). Moreover, the spanner maintained by the algorithm has O_d(ε^{1-d}log ε^{-1})⋅ n edges, almost matching the (offline) optimal bound of O_d(ε^{1-d})⋅ n. In the plane, a tighter analysis of the same algorithm provides an almost quadratic improvement of the competitive ratio to O(ε^{-3/2}logε^{-1}log n), by comparing the online spanner with an instance-optimal spanner directly, bypassing the comparison to an MST (i.e., lightness). As a counterpart, we design a sequence of points that yields a Ω_d(ε^{-d}) lower bound for the competitive ratio for online (1+ε)-spanner algorithms in ℝ^d under the L₁-norm. Then we turn our attention to online spanners in general metrics. Note that, it is not possible to obtain a spanner with stretch less than 3 with a subquadratic number of edges, even in the offline setting, for general metrics. We analyze an online version of the celebrated greedy spanner algorithm, dubbed ordered greedy. With stretch factor t = (2k-1)(1+ε) for k ≥ 2 and ε ∈ (0,1), we show that it maintains a spanner with O(ε^{-1}logε^{-1})⋅ n^{1+1/k} edges and O(ε^{-1}n^{1/k}log² n) lightness for a sequence of n points in a metric space. We show that these bounds cannot be significantly improved, by introducing an instance that achieves an Ω(1/k⋅ n^{1/k}) competitive ratio on both sparsity and lightness. Furthermore, we establish the trade-off among stretch, number of edges and lightness for points in ultrametrics, showing that one can maintain a (2+ε)-spanner for ultrametrics with O(ε^{-1}logε^{-1})⋅ n edges and O(ε^{-2}) lightness. 

   more » « less
4. Minimum Weight Euclidean (1+ε)-Spanners

   Toth, Csaba D. ( October 2022 , Graph-Theoretic Concepts in Computer Science)

   Given a set S of n points in the plane and a parameter ε>0, a Euclidean (1+ε) -spanner is a geometric graph G=(S,E) that contains a path of weight at most (1+ε)∥pq∥2 for all p,q∈S . We show that the minimum weight of a Euclidean (1+ε)-spanner for n points in the unit square [0,1]2 is O(ε−3/2n−−√), and this bound is the best possible. The upper bound is based on a new spanner algorithm that sparsifies Yao-graphs. It improves upon the baseline O(ε−2n−−√), obtained by combining a tight bound for the weight of an MST and a tight bound for the lightness of Euclidean (1+ε)-spanners, which is the ratio of the spanner weight to the weight of the MST. The result generalizes to d-space for all d∈N : The minimum weight of a Euclidean (1+ε)-spanner for n points in the unit cube [0,1]d is Od(ε(1−d2)/dn(d−1)/d), and this bound is the best possible. For the n×n section of the integer lattice, we show that the minimum weight of a Euclidean (1+ε)-spanner is between Ω(ε−3/4n2) and O(ε−1log(ε−1)n2). These bounds become Ω(ε−3/4n−−√) and O(ε−1log(ε−1)n−−√) when scaled to a grid of n points in [0,1]2. . 

   more » « less
5. On the fine-grained complexity of small-size geometric set cover and discrete k-center for small k

   https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2023.34  

   Chan, Timothy M. ; He, Qizheng ; Yu, Yuancheng ( July 2023 , Proc. 50th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2023))

   Etessami, Kousha ; Feige, Uriel ; Puppis, Gabriele (Ed.)

   We study the time complexity of the discrete k-center problem and related (exact) geometric set cover problems when k or the size of the cover is small. We obtain a plethora of new results: - We give the first subquadratic algorithm for rectilinear discrete 3-center in 2D, running in Õ(n^{3/2}) time. - We prove a lower bound of Ω(n^{4/3-δ}) for rectilinear discrete 3-center in 4D, for any constant δ > 0, under a standard hypothesis about triangle detection in sparse graphs. - Given n points and n weighted axis-aligned unit squares in 2D, we give the first subquadratic algorithm for finding a minimum-weight cover of the points by 3 unit squares, running in Õ(n^{8/5}) time. We also prove a lower bound of Ω(n^{3/2-δ}) for the same problem in 2D, under the well-known APSP Hypothesis. For arbitrary axis-aligned rectangles in 2D, our upper bound is Õ(n^{7/4}). - We prove a lower bound of Ω(n^{2-δ}) for Euclidean discrete 2-center in 13D, under the Hyperclique Hypothesis. This lower bound nearly matches the straightforward upper bound of Õ(n^ω), if the matrix multiplication exponent ω is equal to 2. - We similarly prove an Ω(n^{k-δ}) lower bound for Euclidean discrete k-center in O(k) dimensions for any constant k ≥ 3, under the Hyperclique Hypothesis. This lower bound again nearly matches known upper bounds if ω = 2. - We also prove an Ω(n^{2-δ}) lower bound for the problem of finding 2 boxes to cover the largest number of points, given n points and n boxes in 12D . This matches the straightforward near-quadratic upper bound. 

   more » « less