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In the counting Graph Homomorphism problem (#GraphHom) the question is: Given graphs G,H, find the number of homomorphisms from G to H. This problem is generally #P-complete, moreover, Cygan et al. proved that unless the Exponential Time Hypothesis fails there is no algorithm that solves this problem in time O(|V(H)|^o(|V(G)|)). This, however, does not rule out the possibility that faster algorithms exist for restricted problems of this kind. Wahlström proved that #GraphHom can be solved in plain exponential time, that is, in time O((2k+1)^(|V(G)|+|V(H)|) poly(|V(H)|,|V(G)|)) provided H has clique width k. We generalize this result to a larger class of graphs, and also identify several other graph classes that admit a plain exponential algorithm for #GraphHom.
@InProceedings{bulatov_et_al:LIPIcs.ICALP.2020.21,
author = {Bulatov, Andrei A. and Dadsetan, Amineh},
title = {{Counting Homomorphisms in Plain Exponential Time}},
booktitle = {47th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2020)},
pages = {21:1--21:18},
series = {Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
ISBN = {978-3-95977-138-2},
ISSN = {1868-8969},
year = {2020},
volume = {168},
editor = {Czumaj, Artur and Dawar, Anuj and Merelli, Emanuela},
publisher = {Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
address = {Dagstuhl, Germany},
URL = {https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2020.21},
URN = {urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-124287},
doi = {10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2020.21},
annote = {Keywords: graph homomorphisms, plain exponential time, clique width}
}