2026-08-19T06:48:41Z https://drops.dagstuhl.de/oai

oai:drops-oai.dagstuhl.de:24514 2025-12-16T14:00:13Z ddc:004 open_access

Max-Distance Sparsification for Diversification and Clustering Kumabe, Soh Fixed-Parameter Tractability Diversification Clustering Let 𝒟 be a set family that is the solution domain of some combinatorial problem. The max-min diversification problem on 𝒟 is the problem to select k sets from 𝒟 such that the Hamming distance between any two selected sets is at least d. FPT algorithms parameterized by k+𝓁, where 𝓁 = max_{D ∈ 𝒟}|D|, and k+d have been actively studied recently for several specific domains. This paper provides unified algorithmic frameworks to solve this problem. Specifically, for each parameterization k+𝓁 and k+d, we provide an FPT oracle algorithm for the max-min diversification problem using oracles related to 𝒟. We then demonstrate that our frameworks provide the first FPT algorithms on several new domains 𝒟, including the domain of t-linear matroid intersection, almost 2-SAT, minimum edge s,t-flows, vertex sets of s,t-mincut, vertex sets of edge bipartization, and Steiner trees. We also demonstrate that our frameworks generalize most of the existing domain-specific tractability results. Our main technical breakthrough is introducing the notion of max-distance sparsifier of 𝒟, a domain on which the max-min diversification problem is equivalent to the same problem on the original domain 𝒟. The core of our framework is to design FPT oracle algorithms that construct a constant-size max-distance sparsifier of 𝒟. Using max-distance sparsifiers, we provide FPT algorithms for the max-min and max-sum diversification problems on 𝒟, as well as k-center and k-sum-of-radii clustering problems on 𝒟, which are also natural problems in the context of diversification and have their own interests. Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik Soh Kumabe 2025 Is Part Of LIPIcs, Volume 351, 33rd Annual European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA 2025) InProceedings Text doc-type:ResearchArticle publishedVersion application/pdf doi:10.4230/LIPIcs.ESA.2025.46 urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-245146 https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ESA.2025.46 eng https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode