Tight Lower Bounds for List Edge Coloring

Authors Lukasz Kowalik , Arkadiusz Socala



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Author Details

Lukasz Kowalik
  • Institute of Informatics, University of Warsaw, Poland
Arkadiusz Socala
  • Institute of Informatics, University of Warsaw, Poland

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Lukasz Kowalik and Arkadiusz Socala. Tight Lower Bounds for List Edge Coloring. In 16th Scandinavian Symposium and Workshops on Algorithm Theory (SWAT 2018). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 101, pp. 28:1-28:12, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2018)
https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.SWAT.2018.28

Abstract

The fastest algorithms for edge coloring run in time 2^m n^{O(1)}, where m and n are the number of edges and vertices of the input graph, respectively. For dense graphs, this bound becomes 2^{Theta(n^2)}. This is a somewhat unique situation, since most of the studied graph problems admit algorithms running in time 2^{O(n log n)}. It is a notorious open problem to either show an algorithm for edge coloring running in time 2^{o(n^2)} or to refute it, assuming the Exponential Time Hypothesis (ETH) or other well established assumptions. We notice that the same question can be asked for list edge coloring, a well-studied generalization of edge coloring where every edge comes with a set (often called a list) of allowed colors. Our main result states that list edge coloring for simple graphs does not admit an algorithm running in time 2^{o(n^2)}, unless ETH fails. Interestingly, the algorithm for edge coloring running in time 2^m n^{O(1)} generalizes to the list version without any asymptotic slow-down. Thus, our lower bound is essentially tight. This also means that in order to design an algorithm running in time 2^{o(n^2)} for edge coloring, one has to exploit its special features compared to the list version.

Subject Classification

ACM Subject Classification
  • Theory of computation → Problems, reductions and completeness
  • Theory of computation → Design and analysis of algorithms
  • Mathematics of computing → Graph coloring
Keywords
  • list edge coloring
  • complexity
  • ETH lower bound

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