Title
Acquaintance Time of a Graph.
Abstract
We define the following parameter of connected graphs. For a given graph G = (V, E) we place one agent in each vertex nu is an element of V. Every pair of agents sharing a common edge is declared to be acquainted. In each round we choose some matching of G (not necessarily a maximal matching), and for each edge in the matching the agents on this edge swap places. After the swap, again, every pair of agents sharing a common edge become acquainted, and the process continues. We define the acquaintance time of a graph G, denoted by AC(G), to be the minimal number of rounds required until every two agents are acquainted. We first study the acquaintance time for some natural families of graphs including the path, expanders, the binary tree, and the complete bipartite graph. We also show that for all n is an element of N and for all positive integers k <= n(1.5) there exists an n-vertex graph G such that k/c <= AC(G) <= c k for some universal constant c >= 1. We also prove that for all n-vertex connected graphs G we have AC(G) = O(n(2)/log(n)/log log(n)), thus improving the trivial upper bound of O(n(2)) achieved by sequentially letting each agent perform depth-first search along some spanning tree of G. Studying the computational complexity of this problem, we prove that for any constant t >= 1 the problem of deciding that a given graph G has AC(G) <= t or AC(G) >= 2t is NP-complete. That is, AC(G) is NP-hard to approximate within multiplicative factor of 2, as well as within any additive constant factor. On the algorithmic side, we give a deterministic algorithm that given an n-vertex graph G with AC(G) = 1 finds a strategy for acquaintance that consists of [n/c] matchings in time n(c+O(1)). We also design a randomized polynomial time algorithm that given an n-vertex graph G with AC(G) = 1 finds with high probability an O(log(n))-rounds strategy for acquaintance.
Year
DOI
Venue
2013
10.1137/130930078
SIAM JOURNAL ON DISCRETE MATHEMATICS
Keywords
DocType
Volume
routing via matchings,social network graph algorithms,NP-completeness
Journal
28
Issue
ISSN
Citations 
2
0895-4801
5
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.61
6
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Itai Benjamini18114.91
Igor Shinkar2248.97
Gilad Tsur3584.47