The Multicut problem asks for a minimum cut separating certain pairs of vertices: formally, given a graph G and a demand graph H on a set T ⊆ V(G) of terminals, the task is to find a minimum-weight set C of edges of G such that whenever two vertices of T are adjacent in H, they are in different components of G⧵ C. Colin de Verdière [Algorithmica, 2017] showed that Multicut with t terminals on a graph G of genus g can be solved in time f(t,g) n^O(√{g²+gt+t}). Cohen-Addad et al. [JACM, 2021] proved a matching lower bound showing that the exponent of n is essentially best possible (for every fixed value of t and g), even in the special case of Multiway Cut, where the demand graph H is a complete graph. However, this lower bound tells us nothing about other special cases of Multicut such as Group 3-Terminal Cut (where three groups of terminals need to be separated from each other). We show that if the demand pattern is, in some sense, close to being a complete bipartite graph, then Multicut can be solved faster than f(t,g) n^{O(√{g²+gt+t})}, and furthermore this is the only property that allows such an improvement. Formally, for a class ℋ of graphs, Multicut(ℋ) is the special case where the demand graph H is in ℋ. For every fixed class ℋ (satisfying some mild closure property), fixed g, and fixed t, our main result gives tight upper and lower bounds on the exponent of n in algorithms solving Multicut(ℋ). In addition, we investigate a similar setting where, instead of parameterizing by the genus g of G, we parameterize by the minimum number k of edges of G that need to be deleted to obtain a planar graph. Interestingly, in this setting it makes a significant difference whether the graph G is weighted or unweighted: further nontrivial algorithmic techniques give substantial improvements in the unweighted case.
@InProceedings{focke_et_al:LIPIcs.SoCG.2024.57, author = {Focke, Jacob and H\"{o}rsch, Florian and Li, Shaohua and Marx, D\'{a}niel}, title = {{Multicut Problems in Embedded Graphs: The Dependency of Complexity on the Demand Pattern}}, booktitle = {40th International Symposium on Computational Geometry (SoCG 2024)}, pages = {57:1--57:15}, series = {Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)}, ISBN = {978-3-95977-316-4}, ISSN = {1868-8969}, year = {2024}, volume = {293}, editor = {Mulzer, Wolfgang and Phillips, Jeff M.}, publisher = {Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik}, address = {Dagstuhl, Germany}, URL = {https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.SoCG.2024.57}, URN = {urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-200021}, doi = {10.4230/LIPIcs.SoCG.2024.57}, annote = {Keywords: MultiCut, Multiway Cut, Parameterized Complexity, Tight Bounds, Embedded Graph, Planar Graph, Genus, Surface, Exponential Time Hypothesis} }
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