Abstract
We give an analog of the Myhill–Nerode theorem from formal language theory for hypergraphs and use it to derive the following results for two NP-hard hypergraph problems. (1) We provide an algorithm for testing whether a hypergraph has cutwidth at most that runs in linear time for constant In terms of parameterized complexity theory, the problem is fixed-parameter linear parameterized by(2) We show that it is not expressible in monadic second-order logic whether a hypergraph has bounded (fractional, generalized) hypertree width. The proof leads us to conjecture that, in terms of parameterized complexity theory, these problems are W[1]-hard parameterized by the incidence treewidth (the treewidth of the incidence graph). Thus, in the form of the Myhill–Nerode theorem for hypergraphs, we obtain a method to derive linear-time algorithms and to obtain indicators for intractability for hypergraph problems parameterized by incidence treewidth.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 696-729 |
Number of pages | 34 |
Journal | Algorithmica |
Volume | 73 |
Issue number | 4 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Dec 2015 |
Externally published | Yes |
Keywords
- Automata theory
- Cutwidth
- Fixed-parameter algorithms
- Hypertree width
- NP-hard problems