Dismountability in Temporal Cliques Revisited

Abstract

A temporal graph is a graph whose edges are available only at certain points in time. It is temporally connected if the nodes can reach each other by paths that traverse the edges chronologically (temporal paths). Unlike static graphs, temporal graphs do not always admit small subsets of edges that preserve connectivity (temporal spanners) - there exist temporal graphs with Θ(n²) edges, all of which are critical. In the case of temporal cliques (the underlying graph is complete), spanners of size O(nlog n) are guaranteed. The original proof of this result by Casteigts et al. [ICALP 2019] combines a number of techniques, one of which is called dismountability. In a recent work, Angrick et al. [ESA 2024] simplified the proof and showed, among other things, that a one-sided version of dismountability can replace elegantly the second part of the proof.
In this paper, we revisit methodically the dismountability principle. We start by characterizing the structure that a temporal clique must have if it is non 1-hop dismountable, then neither 1-hop nor 2-hop (i.e. non {1,2}-hop) dismountable, and finally non {1,2,3}-hop dismountable. It turns out that if a clique is k-hop dismountable for any other k, then it must also be {1,2,3}-hop dismountable, thus no additional structure can be obtained beyond this point. Interestingly, excluding 1-hop and 2-hop dismountability is already sufficient for reducing the spanner problem from cliques to extremally matched bicliques, where the O(nlog n) result is subsequently obtained. Put together with the strategy of Angrick et al., this entire result can now be recovered using only dismountability. An interesting by-product of our analysis is that any minimal counter-example to the existence of 4n spanners must satisfy the properties of non {1,2,3}-hop dismountable cliques.
In the second part, we discuss further connections between dismountability and another technique called pivotability. In particular, we show that if a temporal clique is recursively k-hop dismountable, then it is also pivotable (and thus admits a 2n spanner, whatever k). We also study a family of labelings called full-range that forces both dismountability and pivotability. The latter gives some evidence that large lifetimes could be exploited more generally for the construction of spanners.