Abstract
Energy games belong to a class of turn-based two-player infinite-duration games played on a weighted directed graph. It is one of the rare and intriguing combinatorial problems that lie in NP ∩ co−NP, but are not known to be in P. While the existence of polynomial-time algorithms has been a major open problem for decades, there is no algorithm that solves any non-trivial subclass in polynomial time.
In this paper, we give several results based on the weight structures of the graph. First, we identify a notion of penalty and present a polynomial-time algorithm when the penalty is large. Our algorithm is the first polynomial-time algorithm on a large class of weighted graphs. It includes several counter examples that show that many previous algorithms, such as value iteration and random facet algorithms, require at least sub-exponential time. Our main technique is developing the first non-trivial approximation algorithm and showing how to convert it to an exact algorithm. Moreover, we show that in a practical case in verification where weights are clustered around a constant number of values, the energy game problem can be solved in polynomial time. We also show that the problem is still as hard as in general when the clique-width is bounded or the graph is strongly ergodic, suggesting that restricting graph structures need not help.
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Chatterjee, K., Henzinger, M., Krinninger, S., Nanongkai, D. (2012). Polynomial-Time Algorithms for Energy Games with Special Weight Structures. In: Epstein, L., Ferragina, P. (eds) Algorithms – ESA 2012. ESA 2012. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7501. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-33090-2_27
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-33090-2_27
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