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DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.STACS.2026.12
Density Matters: A Complexity Dichotomy of Deleting Edges to Bound Subgraph Density

Authors: Matthias Bentert, Tom-Lukas Breitkopf, Vincent Froese, Anton Herrmann, and André Nichterlein

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 364, 43rd International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science (STACS 2026)

Abstract
We study τ-Bounded-Density Edge Deletion (τ-BDED), where given an undirected graph G, the task is to remove as few edges as possible to obtain a graph G' where no subgraph of G' has density more than τ. The density of a (sub)graph is the number of edges divided by the number of vertices. This problem was recently introduced and shown to be NP-hard for τ ∈ {2/3, 3/4, 1 + 1/25}, but polynomial-time solvable for τ ∈ {0,1/2,1} [Bazgan et al., JCSS 2025]. We provide a complete dichotomy with respect to the target density τ: 1) If 2τ ∈ ℕ (half-integral target density) or τ < 2/3, then τ-BDED is polynomial-time solvable. 2) Otherwise, τ-BDED is NP-hard. We complement the NP-hardness with fixed-parameter tractability with respect to the treewidth of G. Moreover, for integral target density τ ∈ ℕ, we show τ-BDED to be solvable in randomized O(m^{1 + o(1)}) time. Our algorithmic results are based on a reduction to a new general flow problem on restricted networks that, depending on τ, can be solved via Maximum s-t-Flow or General Factors. We believe this connection between these variants of flow and matching to be of independent interest.
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Matthias Bentert, Tom-Lukas Breitkopf, Vincent Froese, Anton Herrmann, and André Nichterlein. Density Matters: A Complexity Dichotomy of Deleting Edges to Bound Subgraph Density. In 43rd International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science (STACS 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 364, pp. 12:1-12:20, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

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@InProceedings{bentert_et_al:LIPIcs.STACS.2026.12,
  author =	{Bentert, Matthias and Breitkopf, Tom-Lukas and Froese, Vincent and Herrmann, Anton and Nichterlein, Andr\'{e}},
  title =	{{Density Matters: A Complexity Dichotomy of Deleting Edges to Bound Subgraph Density}},
  booktitle =	{43rd International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science (STACS 2026)},
  pages =	{12:1--12:20},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-412-3},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{364},
  editor =	{Mahajan, Meena and Manea, Florin and McIver, Annabelle and Thắng, Nguy\~{ê}n Kim},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.STACS.2026.12},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-255012},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.STACS.2026.12},
  annote =	{Keywords: Transshipment, Maximum Flow, General Factors, Matching, Graph Modification Problem}
}
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