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An open access journal in theoretical computer science |
Volume 5
2026
1. Deterministic approximate counting of colorings with fewer than $2Δ$ colors via absence of zeros
Let $Δ,q\geq 3$ be integers. We prove that there exists $η\geq 0.002$ such that if $q\geq (2-η)Δ$, then there exists an open set $\mathcal{U}\subset \mathbb{C}$ that contains the interval $[0,1]$ such that for each $w\in \mathcal{U}$ and any graph $G=(V,E)$ of maximum degree at most $Δ$, the partition function of the anti-ferromagnetic $q$-state Potts model evaluated at $w$ does not vanish. This provides a (modest) improvement on a result of Liu, Sinclair, and Srivastava, and breaks the $q=2Δ$-barrier for this problem. As a direct consequence we obtain via Barvinok's interpolation method a deterministic polynomial time algorithm to approximate the number of proper $q$-colorings of graphs of maximum degree at most $Δ$, provided $q\geq (2-η)Δ$.
2. Minimum Star Partitions of Simple Polygons in Polynomial Time
We devise a polynomial-time algorithm for partitioning a simple polygon $P$ into a minimum number of star-shaped polygons. The question of whether such an algorithm exists has been open for more than four decades [Avis and Toussaint, Pattern Recognit., 1981] and it has been repeated frequently, for example in O'Rourke's famous book [Art Gallery Theorems and Algorithms, 1987]. In addition to its strong theoretical motivation, the problem is also motivated by practical domains such as CNC pocket milling, motion planning, and shape parameterization. The only previously known algorithm for a non-trivial special case is for $P$ being both monotone and rectilinear [Liu and Ntafos, Algorithmica, 1991]. For general polygons, an algorithm was only known for the restricted version in which Steiner points are disallowed [Keil, SIAM J. Comput., 1985], meaning that each corner of a piece in the partition must also be a corner of $P$. Interestingly, the solution size for the restricted version may be linear for instances where the unrestricted solution has constant size. The covering variant in which the pieces are star-shaped but allowed to overlap--known as the Art Gallery Problem--was recently shown to be $\exists\mathbb R$-complete and is thus likely not in NP [Abrahamsen, Adamaszek and Miltzow, STOC 2018 & J. ACM 2022]; this is in stark contrast to our result. Arguably the most related work to ours is the polynomial-time algorithm to partition a simple polygon into a […]
3. Simple Sublinear Algorithms for $(Δ+1)$ Vertex Coloring via Asymmetric Palette Sparsification
The palette sparsification theorem (PST) of Assadi, Chen, and Khanna (SODA 2019) states that in every graph $G$ with maximum degree $Δ$, sampling a list of $O(\log{n})$ colors from $\{1,\ldots,Δ+1\}$ for every vertex independently and uniformly, with high probability, allows for finding a $(Δ+1)$ vertex coloring of $G$ by coloring each vertex only from its sampled list. PST naturally leads to a host of sublinear algorithms for $(Δ+1)$ vertex coloring, including in semi-streaming, sublinear time, and MPC models, which are all proven to be nearly optimal, and in the case of the former two are the only known sublinear algorithms for this problem. While being a quite natural and simple-to-state theorem, PST suffers from two drawbacks. Firstly, all its known proofs require technical arguments that rely on sophisticated graph decompositions and probabilistic arguments. Secondly, finding the coloring of the graph from the sampled lists in an efficient manner requires a considerably complicated algorithm. We show that a natural weakening of PST addresses both these drawbacks while still leading to sublinear algorithms of similar quality (up to polylog factors). In particular, we prove an asymmetric palette sparsification theorem (APST) that allows for list sizes of the vertices to have different sizes and only bounds the average size of these lists. The benefit of this weaker requirement is that we can now easily show the graph can be $(Δ+1)$ colored from the sampled lists […]
4. Isomorphism for Tournaments of Small Twin Width
We prove that isomorphism of tournaments of twin width at most $k$ can be decided in time $k^{O(\log k)}n^{O(1)}$. This implies that the isomorphism problem for classes of tournaments of bounded or moderately growing twin width is in polynomial time. By comparison, there are classes of undirected graphs of bounded twin width that are isomorphism complete, that is, the isomorphism problem for the classes is as hard as the general graph isomorphism problem. Twin width is a graph parameter that has been introduced only recently (Bonnet et al., J. ACM 2022), but has received a lot of attention in structural graph theory since then. On directed graphs, it is functionally smaller than clique width. We prove that on tournaments (but not on general directed graphs) it is also functionally smaller than directed tree width (and thus, the same also holds for cut width and directed path width). Hence, our result implies that tournament isomorphism testing is also fixed-parameter tractable when parameterized by any of these parameters. Our isomorphism algorithm heavily employs group-theoretic techniques. This seems to be necessary: as a second main result, we show that the combinatorial Weisfeiler-Leman algorithm does not decide isomorphism of tournaments of twin width at most 35 if its dimension is $o(n)$. (Throughout this abstract, $n$ is the order of the input graphs.)
5. Positional $ω$-regular languages
In the context of two-player games over graphs, a language $L$ is called positional if, in all games using $L$ as winning objective, the protagonist can play optimally using positional strategies, that is, strategies that do not depend on the history of the play. In this work, we describe the class of parity automata recognising positional languages, providing a complete characterisation of positionality for $ω$-regular languages. As corollaries, we establish decidability of positionality in polynomial time, finite-to-infinite and 1-to-2-players lifts, and show the closure under union of prefix-independent positional objectives, answering a conjecture by Kopczyński in the $ω$-regular case.
6. Enumeration for MSO-Queries on Compressed Trees
We study the problem of enumerating the answers to a query formulated in monadic second order logic (MSO) over an unranked forest F that is compressed by a straight-line program (SLP) D. Our main result states that this can be done after O(|D|) preprocessing and with output-linear delay (in data complexity). This is a substantial improvement over the previously known algorithms for MSO-evaluation over trees, since the compressed size |D| might be much smaller than (or even logarithmic in) the actual data size |F|, and there are linear time SLP-compressors that yield very good compressions on practical inputs. In particular, this also constitutes a meta-theorem in the field of algorithmics on SLP-compressed inputs: all enumeration problems on trees or strings that can be formulated in MSO-logic can be solved with linear preprocessing and output-linear delay, even if the inputs are compressed by SLPs. We also show that our approach can support vertex relabelling updates in time that is logarithmic in the uncompressed data. Our result extends previous work on the enumeration of MSO-queries over uncompressed trees and on the enumeration of document spanners over compressed text documents.