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Counting Cycles on Planar Graphs in Subexponential Time

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Computing and Combinatorics (COCOON 2022)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 13595))

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Abstract

We study the problem of counting all cycles or self-avoiding walks (SAWs) on triangulated planar graphs. We present a subexponential \(2^{O(\sqrt{n})}\) time algorithm for this counting problem. Among the technical ingredients used in this algorithm are the planar separator theorem and a delicate analysis using pairs of Motzkin paths and Motzkin numbers. We can then adapt this algorithm to uniformly sample SAWs, in subexponential time. Our work is motivated by the problem of gerrymandered districting maps.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The algorithm in [4] is applicable for grid graphs only, and it was explicitly calculated that the number of self avoiding walks connecting two diagonal corners in a \(19 \times 19\) grid graph is \( > 10^{88}\). Our algorithm for planar graphs is based on a recursive, thus different, approach.

  2. 2.

    It is known that asymptotically we have \( \left|\mathcal {L}_{A} \right|\le O(3^{|E_{A}|})\).

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Acknowledgements

We sincerely thank the three anonymous referees for their careful reading of the paper and helpful suggestions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, USA

    Jin-Yi Cai & Ashwin Maran

Authors
  1. Jin-Yi Cai
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  2. Ashwin Maran
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Correspondence to Ashwin Maran .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, Shenzhen, China

    Yong Zhang

  2. Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China

    Dongjing Miao

  3. Technical University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Rolf Möhring

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Cai, JY., Maran, A. (2022). Counting Cycles on Planar Graphs in Subexponential Time. In: Zhang, Y., Miao, D., Möhring, R. (eds) Computing and Combinatorics. COCOON 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13595. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22105-7_24

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22105-7_24

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-22104-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-22105-7

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