Theoreti

alComputerS ien eLab

Dr. L. Sunil Chandran, Dr. Sathish Govindrajan

Areas of Interest

Theoreti al Computer S ien e Lab works mainly in the areas of Graph Theory, ombinatori s and Geometry Graph Theoreti Problems
Combinatorial Geometry
Algorithms on Graphs

Computational Geometry

A y li edge oloring

Proper edge oloring of a graph is the assign-

ment of olors to the edges su h that adja ent

edges get dierent olors.

A proper edge- oloring with the property

that every y le ontains edges of at least

three distin t olors is alled an "a y li edge oloring".

We on entrate on graph theoreti on epts

like obtaining lower and upper bounds for the

a y li edge hromati number.

Randomized and Approximation Algorithms

Geometri Graphs

A geometri graph is drawn on Eu lidean

plane with points as verti es and line segments

joining them serving as edges.

Edges are dened based on some geometri

onstraints. Depending on these onstraints

we get various lassses of geometri graphs.

Two broad resear h problems on these graphs:

 Proving ombinatorial bounds.

 Algorithms to ompute optimum graphs.

Currently we are looking at Lo ally Delaunay

Graphs and Lo ally Gabriel graphs.

Some Spe ial Interse tion Graphs

A k -dimensional box is a Cartesian produ t of

losed intervals [a1 , b1 ] [a2 , b2 ] [ak , bk ].

A graph is said to have a k -box representation if ea h vertex an be asso iated with a k-

dimensional box in the Eu lidean spa e su h

that two verti es are adja ent if and only if
their orresponding k-dimensional boxes have
a non-empty interse tion.

The minimum k for whi h G has su h a k box representation is alled the boxi ity of k.
Similarly we an repla e k-dimensional boxes
with k-dimensional unit ubes, i.e. Cartesian
produ t of k unit intervals and the resulting

parameter is referred to as ubi ity of a graph.

Proper Coloring of Cycle

Coloring of Complete graph

Acyclic Coloring of Cycle Acyclic
with four vertices

k -gon
Consider a two player game where ea h player
pla es a point in general position in his turn.
The obje tive of the game is to avoid the formation of an empty onvex k-gon among the
set of points pla ed by the players.
Empty onvex

We assume that ea h player optimally pla es

the point in his turn.

We fo us on nding the exa t value/bounds

on the number of steps before the game ends

for k 5.
bipartite mat hing problem

Consider the problem of mat hing appli ants to a

set of jobs with preferen es. A popular mat hing
satises maximum number of appli ants. We look
at instan es not admitting popular mat hing.

We are developing the on epts needed by

looking at spe ial lasses of graphs and obtaining bounds on them.

Most of our proofs are onstru tive yielding

e ient polynomial time algorithms for the

a y li edge oloring of the graphs under onsideration.

Food for Thought

Prove that to a y li ally edge olor a d-regular
graph at least d + 1 olors are required.
Can you say anything about the lower bound

of a y li edge hromati number for Complete graphs? How about upper bound (This
problem is open)?

j1

Invalid and valid Lo ally Gabriel Graphs

Combinatorial bounds on LDG/LGG:

 n |LGG| n
4
3
 n 3 |LDG| n 2
5
4

3
2

No polynomial time algorithm to ompute the

optimum LDG/LGG is known. It is onje tured that the problem is hard, although no
hardness proof is known yet.

We

are looking at developing exa t/approximation algorithms for omputing

optimum LGG on spe ial point sets like
onvex point set.

We have developed/proved the following.

A randomized algorithm to onstru t a box
representation for any graph G on n verti es
in O( logn) dimensions.
The boxi ity of a graph is at most 22 .

Almost all graphs have (n) boxi ity. There

exists no deterministi polynomial time algorithm to approximate the boxi ity

of
a
graph

on n elements within a O( n) fa tor.

Bounds on the ubi ity of interval graphs.

j2

a1

a2

a3

1
M1

j3

j4

j5

j1

j2

a1

a2

a3

j3

j4

j5

5
3

M2

M1 is better mat hing than M2

Computing a least unpopular mat hing is NP-

Hard. We give a simple polynomial time algorithm to ompute a mat hing with bounded
unpopularity.

We onsider omputing a probability distri-

bution over mat hings whi h is Popular. We

show that su h a mixed popular mat hing always exists and an be omputed e iently
using a linear programming formulation.