# vol. 22 no. 4

### 1. (Open) packing number of some graph products

The packing number of a graph $G$ is the maximum number of closed neighborhoods of vertices in $G$ with pairwise empty intersections. Similarly, the open packing number of $G$ is the maximum number of open neighborhoods in $G$ with pairwise empty intersections. We consider the packing and open packing numbers on graph products. In particular we give a complete solution with respect to some properties of factors in the case of lexicographic and rooted products. For Cartesian, strong and direct products, we present several lower and upper bounds on these parameters.
Section: Graph Theory

### 2. A Type System Describing Unboundedness

We consider nondeterministic higher-order recursion schemes as recognizers of languages of finite words or finite trees. We propose a type system that allows to solve the simultaneous-unboundedness problem (SUP) for schemes, which asks, given a set of letters A and a scheme G, whether it is the case that for every number n the scheme accepts a word (a tree) in which every letter from A appears at least n times. Using this type system we prove that SUP is (m-1)-EXPTIME-complete for word-recognizing schemes of order m, and m-EXPTIME-complete for tree-recognizing schemes of order m. Moreover, we establish the reflection property for SUP: out of an input scheme G one can create its enhanced version that recognizes the same language but is aware of the answer to SUP.
Section: Automata, Logic and Semantics

### 3. A Büchi-Elgot-Trakhtenbrot theorem for automata with MSO graph storage

We introduce MSO graph storage types, and call a storage type MSO-expressible if it is isomorphic to some MSO graph storage type. An MSO graph storage type has MSO-definable sets of graphs as storage configurations and as storage transformations. We consider sequential automata with MSO graph storage and associate with each such automaton a string language (in the usual way) and a graph language; a graph is accepted by the automaton if it represents a correct sequence of storage configurations for a given input string. For each MSO graph storage type, we define an MSO logic which is a subset of the usual MSO logic on graphs. We prove a Büchi-Elgot-Trakhtenbrot theorem, both for the string case and the graph case. Moreover, we prove that (i) each MSO graph transduction can be used as storage transformation in an MSO graph storage type, (ii) every automatic storage type is MSO-expressible, and (iii) the pushdown operator on storage types preserves the property of MSO-expressibility. Thus, the iterated pushdown storage types are MSO-expressible.
Section: Automata, Logic and Semantics

### 4. Evacuating Robots from a Disk Using Face-to-Face Communication

Assume that two robots are located at the centre of a unit disk. Their goal is to evacuate from the disk through an exit at an unknown location on the boundary of the disk. At any time the robots can move anywhere they choose on the disk, independently of each other, with maximum speed $1$. The robots can cooperate by exchanging information whenever they meet. We study algorithms for the two robots to minimize the evacuation time: the time when both robots reach the exit. In [CGGKMP14] the authors gave an algorithm defining trajectories for the two robots yielding evacuation time at most $5.740$ and also proved that any algorithm has evacuation time at least $3+ \frac{\pi}{4} + \sqrt{2} \approx 5.199$. We improve both the upper and lower bound on the evacuation time of a unit disk. Namely, we present a new non-trivial algorithm whose evacuation time is at most $5.628$ and show that any algorithm has evacuation time at least $3+ \frac{\pi}{6} + \sqrt{3} \approx 5.255$. To achieve the upper bound, we designed an algorithm which proposes a forced meeting between the two robots, even if the exit has not been found by either of them. We also show that such a strategy is provably optimal for a related problem of searching for an exit placed at the vertices of a regular hexagon.
Section: Distributed Computing and Networking

### 5. Taking-and-merging games as rewrite games

This work is a contribution to the study of rewrite games. Positions are finite words, and the possible moves are defined by a finite number of local rewriting rules. We introduce and investigate taking-and-merging games, that is, where each rule is of the form a^k->epsilon. We give sufficient conditions for a game to be such that the losing positions (resp. the positions with a given Grundy value) form a regular language or a context-free language. We formulate several related open questions in parallel with the famous conjecture of Guy about the periodicity of the Grundy function of octal games. Finally we show that more general rewrite games quickly lead to undecidable problems. Namely, it is undecidable whether there exists a winning position in a given regular language, even if we restrict to games where each move strictly reduces the length of the current position. We formulate several related open questions in parallel with the famous conjecture of Guy about the periodicity of the Grundy function of octal games.

### 6. Even cycles and perfect matchings in claw-free plane graphs

Lov{á}sz showed that a matching covered graph $G$ has an ear decomposition starting with an arbitrary edge of $G$. Let $G$ be a graph which has a perfect matching. We call $G$ cycle-nice if for each even cycle $C$ of $G$, $G-V(C)$ has a perfect matching. If $G$ is a cycle-nice matching covered graph, then $G$ has ear decompositions starting with an arbitrary even cycle of $G$. In this paper, we characterize cycle-nice claw-free plane graphs. We show that the only cycle-nice simple 3-connected claw-free plane graphs are $K_4$, $W_5$ and $\overline C_6$. Furthermore, every cycle-nice 2-connected claw-free plane graph can be obtained from a graph in the family ${\cal F}$ by a sequence of three types of operations, where ${\cal F}$ consists of even cycles, a diamond, $K_4$, and $\overline C_6$.
Section: Graph Theory

### 7. A Double Exponential Lower Bound for the Distinct Vectors Problem

In the (binary) Distinct Vectors problem we are given a binary matrix A with pairwise different rows and want to select at most k columns such that, restricting the matrix to these columns, all rows are still pairwise different. A result by Froese et al. [JCSS] implies a 2^2^(O(k)) * poly(|A|)-time brute-force algorithm for Distinct Vectors. We show that this running time bound is essentially optimal by showing that there is a constant c such that the existence of an algorithm solving Distinct Vectors with running time 2^(O(2^(ck))) * poly(|A|) would contradict the Exponential Time Hypothesis.
Section: Discrete Algorithms

### 8. Extension Complexity, MSO Logic, and Treewidth

We consider the convex hull $P_{\varphi}(G)$ of all satisfying assignments of a given MSO formula $\varphi$ on a given graph $G$. We show that there exists an extended formulation of the polytope $P_{\varphi}(G)$ that can be described by $f(|\varphi|,\tau)\cdot n$ inequalities, where $n$ is the number of vertices in $G$, $\tau$ is the treewidth of $G$ and $f$ is a computable function depending only on $\varphi$ and $\tau.$ In other words, we prove that the extension complexity of $P_{\varphi}(G)$ is linear in the size of the graph $G$, with a constant depending on the treewidth of $G$ and the formula $\varphi$. This provides a very general yet very simple meta-theorem about the extension complexity of polytopes related to a wide class of problems and graphs. As a corollary of our main result, we obtain an analogous result % for the weaker MSO$_1$ logic on the wider class of graphs of bounded cliquewidth. Furthermore, we study our main geometric tool which we term the glued product of polytopes. While the glued product of polytopes has been known since the '90s, we are the first to show that it preserves decomposability and boundedness of treewidth of the constraint matrix. This implies that our extension of $P_\varphi(G)$ is decomposable and has a constraint matrix of bounded treewidth; so far only few classes of polytopes are known to be decomposable. These properties make our extension useful in the construction of algorithms.
Section: Discrete Algorithms

### 9. Two lower bounds for $p$-centered colorings

Given a graph $G$ and an integer $p$, a coloring $f : V(G) \to \mathbb{N}$ is \emph{$p$-centered} if for every connected subgraph $H$ of $G$, either $f$ uses more than $p$ colors on $H$ or there is a color that appears exactly once in $H$. The notion of $p$-centered colorings plays a central role in the theory of sparse graphs. In this note we show two lower bounds on the number of colors required in a $p$-centered coloring. First, we consider monotone classes of graphs whose shallow minors have average degree bounded polynomially in the radius, or equivalently (by a result of Dvo\v{r}ák and Norin), admitting strongly sublinear separators. We construct such a class such that $p$-centered colorings require a number of colors super-polynomial in $p$. This is in contrast with a recent result of Pilipczuk and Siebertz, who established a polynomial upper bound in the special case of graphs excluding a fixed minor. Second, we consider graphs of maximum degree $\Delta$. D\k{e}bski, Felsner, Micek, and Schröder recently proved that these graphs have $p$-centered colorings with $O(\Delta^{2-1/p} p)$ colors. We show that there are graphs of maximum degree $\Delta$ that require $\Omega(\Delta^{2-1/p} p \ln^{-1/p}\Delta)$ colors in any $p$-centered coloring, thus matching their upper bound up to a logarithmic factor.
Section: Graph Theory

### 10. The number of distinct adjacent pairs in geometrically distributed words

A sequence of geometric random variables of length $n$ is a sequence of $n$ independent and identically distributed geometric random variables ($\Gamma_1, \Gamma_2, \dots, \Gamma_n$) where $\mathbb{P}(\Gamma_j=i)=pq^{i-1}$ for $1~\leq~j~\leq~n$ with $p+q=1.$ We study the number of distinct adjacent two letter patterns in such sequences. Initially we directly count the number of distinct pairs in words of short length. Because of the rapid growth of the number of word patterns we change our approach to this problem by obtaining an expression for the expected number of distinct pairs in words of length $n$. We also obtain the asymptotics for the expected number as $n \to \infty$.
Section: Analysis of Algorithms

### 11. A Note on Graphs of Dichromatic Number 2

Neumann-Lara and Škrekovski conjectured that every planar digraph is 2-colourable. We show that this conjecture is equivalent to the more general statement that all oriented K_5-minor-free graphs are 2-colourable.
Section: Graph Theory

### 12. A new sufficient condition for a Digraph to be Hamiltonian-A proof of Manoussakis Conjecture

Y. Manoussakis (J. Graph Theory 16, 1992, 51-59) proposed the following conjecture. \noindent\textbf{Conjecture}. {\it Let $D$ be a 2-strongly connected digraph of order $n$ such that for all distinct pairs of non-adjacent vertices $x$, $y$ and $w$, $z$, we have $d(x)+d(y)+d(w)+d(z)\geq 4n-3$. Then $D$ is Hamiltonian.} In this paper, we confirm this conjecture. Moreover, we prove that if a digraph $D$ satisfies the conditions of this conjecture and has a pair of non-adjacent vertices $\{x,y\}$ such that $d(x)+d(y)\leq 2n-4$, then $D$ contains cycles of all lengths $3, 4, \ldots , n$.
Section: Graph Theory

### 13. The LexCycle on $\overline{P_{2}\cup P_{3}}$-free Cocomparability Graphs

A graph $G$ is a cocomparability graph if there exists an acyclic transitive orientation of the edges of its complement graph $\overline{G}$. LBFS$^{+}$ is a variant of the generic Lexicographic Breadth First Search (LBFS), which uses a specific tie-breaking mechanism. Starting with some ordering $\sigma_{0}$ of $G$, let $\{\sigma_{i}\}_{i\geq 1}$ be the sequence of orderings such that $\sigma_{i}=$LBFS$^{+}(G, \sigma_{i-1})$. The LexCycle($G$) is defined as the maximum length of a cycle of vertex orderings of $G$ obtained via such a sequence of LBFS$^{+}$ sweeps. Dusart and Habib conjectured in 2017 that LexCycle($G$)=2 if $G$ is a cocomparability graph and proved it holds for interval graphs. In this paper, we show that LexCycle($G$)=2 if $G$ is a $\overline{P_{2}\cup P_{3}}$-free cocomparability graph, where a $\overline{P_{2}\cup P_{3}}$ is the graph whose complement is the disjoint union of $P_{2}$ and $P_{3}$. As corollaries, it's applicable for diamond-free cocomparability graphs, cocomparability graphs with girth at least 4, as well as interval graphs.
Section: Graph Theory