Almost disjoint paths and separating by forbidden pairs

By Menger's theorem, the maximum number of arc-disjoint paths from a vertex s to a vertex t in a directed graph equals the minimum number of arcs needed to disconnect s and t, i.e., the minimum size of an s-t-cut. The max-flow problem in a network with unit capacities is equivalent to the arc-disjoint paths problem. Moreover, the max-flow and min-cut problems form a strongly dual pair. We relax the disjointedness requirement on the paths, allowing them to be almost disjoint, meaning they may share up to one arc. The resulting almost disjoint paths problem (ADP) asks fork s-t-paths such that any two of them are almost disjoint. The separating by forbidden pairs problem (SFP) is the corresponding dual problem and calls for a set of k arc pairs such that every s-t-path contains both arcs of at least one such pair. In this paper, we explore these two problems, showing that they have an unbounded duality gap in general and analyzing their complexity. We prove that ADP is NP-complete when k is part of the input and that SFP is Sigma P-2-complete, even for acyclic graphs. Furthermore, we efficiently solve ADP when k <= 2 is fixed and present a polynomial time algorithm based on dynamic programming for ADP when k is constant.

Automated summary

By studying the almost disjoint paths problem and the separating by forbidden pairs problem, this paper reveals that they have an unbounded duality gap and analyzes their complexity. In addition, for a fixed value of k, an efficient algorithm is proposed to solve the ADP problem.