Search Results

Documents authored by Taubner, Adrian


Document
On Finding 𝓁-Th Smallest Perfect Matchings

Authors: Nicolas El Maalouly, Sebastian Haslebacher, Adrian Taubner, and Lasse Wulf

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 351, 33rd Annual European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA 2025)


Abstract
Given an undirected weighted graph G and an integer k, Exact-Weight Perfect Matching (EWPM) is the problem of finding a perfect matching of weight exactly k in G. In this paper, we study EWPM and its variants. The EWPM problem is famous, since in the case of unary encoded weights, Mulmuley, Vazirani, and Vazirani showed almost 40 years ago that the problem can be solved in randomized polynomial time. However, up to this date no derandomization is known. Our first result is a simple deterministic algorithm for EWPM that runs in time n^𝒪(𝓁), where 𝓁 is the number of distinct weights that perfect matchings in G can take. In fact, we show how to find an 𝓁-th smallest perfect matching in any weighted graph (even if the weights are encoded in binary, in which case EWPM in general is known to be NP-complete) in time n^𝒪(𝓁) for any integer 𝓁. Similar next-to-optimal variants have also been studied recently for the shortest path problem. For our second result, we extend the list of problems that are known to be equivalent to EWPM. We show that EWPM is equivalent under a weight-preserving reduction to the Exact Cycle Sum problem (ECS) in undirected graphs with a conservative (i.e. no negative cycles) weight function. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to study this problem. As a consequence, the latter problem is contained in RP if the weights are encoded in unary. Finally, we identify a special case of EWPM, called BCPM, which was recently studied by El Maalouly, Steiner and Wulf. We show that BCPM is equivalent under a weight-preserving transformation to another problem recently studied by Schlotter and Sebő as well as Geelen and Kapadia: the Shortest Odd Cycle problem (SOC) in undirected graphs with conservative weights. Finally, our n^𝒪(𝓁) algorithm works in this setting as well, identifying a tractable special case of SOC, BCPM, and ECS.

Cite as

Nicolas El Maalouly, Sebastian Haslebacher, Adrian Taubner, and Lasse Wulf. On Finding 𝓁-Th Smallest Perfect Matchings. In 33rd Annual European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 351, pp. 19:1-19:15, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)


Copy BibTex To Clipboard

@InProceedings{elmaalouly_et_al:LIPIcs.ESA.2025.19,
  author =	{El Maalouly, Nicolas and Haslebacher, Sebastian and Taubner, Adrian and Wulf, Lasse},
  title =	{{On Finding 𝓁-Th Smallest Perfect Matchings}},
  booktitle =	{33rd Annual European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA 2025)},
  pages =	{19:1--19:15},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-395-9},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{351},
  editor =	{Benoit, Anne and Kaplan, Haim and Wild, Sebastian and Herman, Grzegorz},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ESA.2025.19},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-244875},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ESA.2025.19},
  annote =	{Keywords: Exact Matching, Perfect Matching, Exact-Weight Perfect Matching, Shortest Odd Cycle, Exact Cycle Sum, l-th Smallest Solution, l-th Largest Solution, k-th Best Solution, Derandomization}
}
Any Issues?
X

Feedback on the Current Page

CAPTCHA

Thanks for your feedback!

Feedback submitted to Dagstuhl Publishing

Could not send message

Please try again later or send an E-mail