Hamiltonian path problem
In the mathematical field of graph theory the Hamiltonian path problem and the Hamiltonian cycle problem are problems of determining whether a Hamiltonian path or a Hamiltonian cycle exists in a given graph (whether directed or undirected). Both problems are NP-complete.[1]
Relation between problems
There is a simple relation between the problems of finding a Hamiltonian path and a Hamiltonian cycle. In one direction, the Hamiltonian path problem for graph G is equivalent to the Hamiltonian cycle problem in a graph H obtained from G by adding a new vertex and connecting it to all vertices of G. Thus, finding a Hamiltonian path cannot be significantly slower (in the worst case, as a function of the number of vertices) than finding a Hamiltonian cycle.
In the other direction, a graph G has a Hamiltonian cycle using edge uv if and only if the graph H obtained from G by replacing the edge by a pair of vertices of degree 1, one connected to u and one connected to v, has a Hamiltonian path. Therefore, by trying this replacement for all edges incident to some chosen vertex of G, the Hamiltonian cycle problem can be solved by at most n Hamiltonian path computations, where n is the number of vertices in the graph.
The Hamiltonian cycle problem is also a special case of the travelling salesman problem, obtained by setting the distance between two cities to one if they are adjacent and two otherwise, and verifying that the total distance travelled is equal to n (if so, the route is a Hamiltonian circuit; if there is no Hamiltonian circuit then the shortest route will be longer).
Algorithms
There are n! different sequences of vertices that might be Hamiltonian paths in a given n-vertex graph (and are, in a complete graph), so a brute force search algorithm that tests all possible sequences would be very slow. There are several faster approaches. A search procedure by Frank Rubin[2] divides the edges of the graph into three classes: those that must be in the path, those that cannot be in the path, and undecided. As the search proceeds, a set of decision rules classifies the undecided edges, and determines whether to halt or continue the search. The algorithm divides the graph into components that can be solved separately. Also, a dynamic programming algorithm of Bellman, Held, and Karp can be used to solve the problem in time O(n2 2n). In this method, one determines, for each set S of vertices and each vertex v in S, whether there is a path that covers exactly the vertices in S and ends at v. For each choice of S and v, a path exists for (S,v) if and only if v has a neighbor w such that a path exists for (S − v,w), which can be looked up from already-computed information in the dynamic program.[3][4]
Andreas Björklund provided an alternative approach using the inclusion–exclusion principle to reduce the problem of counting the number of Hamiltonian cycles to a simpler counting problem, of counting cycle covers, which can be solved by computing certain matrix determinants. Using this method, he showed how to solve the Hamiltonian cycle problem in arbitrary n-vertex graphs by a Monte Carlo algorithm in time O(1.657n); for bipartite graphs this algorithm can be further improved to time O(1.414n).[5]
For graphs of maximum degree three, a careful backtracking search can find a Hamiltonian cycle (if one exists) in time O(1.251n).[6]
Because of the difficulty of solving the Hamiltonian path and cycle problems on conventional computers, they have also been studied in unconventional models of computing. For instance, Leonard Adleman showed that the Hamiltonian path problem may be solved using a DNA computer. Exploiting the parallelism inherent in chemical reactions, the problem may be solved using a number of chemical reaction steps linear in the number of vertices of the graph; however, it requires a factorial number of distinct types of DNA molecule to participate in the reaction.[7]
Complexity
The problem of finding a Hamiltonian cycle or path is in FNP; the analogous decision problem is to test whether a Hamiltonian cycle or path exists. The directed and undirected Hamiltonian cycle problems were two of Karp's 21 NP-complete problems. They remain NP-complete even for undirected planar graphs of maximum degree three,[8] for directed planar graphs with indegree and outdegree at most two,[9] for bridgeless undirected planar 3-regular bipartite graphs, and for 3-connected 3-regular bipartite graphs.[10] However, putting all of these conditions together, it remains open whether 3-connected 3-regular bipartite planar graphs must always contain a Hamiltonian cycle, in which case the problem restricted to those graphs could not be NP-complete; see Barnette's conjecture.
In graphs in which all vertices have odd degree, an argument related to the handshaking lemma shows that the number of Hamiltonian cycles through any fixed edge is always even, so if one Hamiltonian cycle is given, then a second one must also exist.[11] However, finding this second cycle does not seem to be an easy computational task. Papadimitriou defined the complexity class PPA to encapsulate problems such as this one.[12]
References
- ^ Michael R. Garey and David S. Johnson (1979). Computers and Intractability: A Guide to the Theory of NP-Completeness. W.H. Freeman. ISBN 0-7167-1045-5. A1.3: GT37–39, pp. 199–200.
- ^ Rubin, Frank (1974), "A Search Procedure for Hamilton Paths and Circuits", Journal of the ACM, 21: 576–80.
- ^ Bellman, R. (1962), "Dynamic programming treatment of the travelling salesman problem", Journal of the ACM, 9: 61–63, doi:10.1145/321105.321111.
- ^ Held, M.; Karp, R. M. (1962), "A dynamic programming approach to sequencing problems", J. SIAM, 10 (1): 196–210, doi:10.1137/0110015.
- ^ Björklund, Andreas (2010), "Determinant sums for undirected Hamiltonicity", Proc. 51st IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS '10), pp. 173–182, arXiv:1008.0541, doi:10.1109/FOCS.2010.24.
- ^ Iwama, Kazuo; Nakashima, Takuya (2007), "An improved exact algorithm for cubic graph TSP", Proc. 13th Annual International Conference on Computing and Combinatorics (COCOON 2007), Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 4598, pp. 108–117, doi:10.1007/978-3-540-73545-8_13.
- ^ Adleman, Leonard (November), "Molecular computation of solutions to combinatorial problems", Science, 266 (5187): 1021–1024, doi:10.1126/science.7973651, JSTOR 2885489, PMID 7973651
{{citation}}: Check date values in:|year=(help). - ^ Garey, M. R.; Johnson, D. S.; Stockmeyer, L. (1974), "Some simplified NP-complete problems", Proc. 6th ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC '74), pp. 47–63, doi:10.1145/800119.803884.
- ^ Plesńik, J. (1979), "The NP-completeness of the Hamiltonian cycle problem in planar digraphs with degree bound two" (PDF), Information Processing Letters, 8 (4): 199–201.
- ^ Akiyama, Takanori; Nishizeki, Takao; Saito, Nobuji (1980--1981), "NP-completeness of the Hamiltonian cycle problem for bipartite graphs" (PDF), Journal of Information Processing, 3 (2): 73–76, MR 0596313
{{citation}}: Check date values in:|year=(help). - ^ Thomason, A. G. (1978), "Hamiltonian cycles and uniquely edge colourable graphs", Advances in Graph Theory (Cambridge Combinatorial Conf., Trinity College, Cambridge, 1977), Annals of Discrete Mathematics, vol. 3, pp. 259–268, doi:10.1016/S0167-5060(08)70511-9, MR 0499124.
- ^ Papadimitriou, Christos H. (1994), "On the complexity of the parity argument and other inefficient proofs of existence", Journal of Computer and System Sciences, 48 (3): 498–532, doi:10.1016/S0022-0000(05)80063-7, MR 1279412.