Takashi Noguchi

Yusuke Kobayashi, Takashi Noguchi

In the 2-Vertex-Connected Spanning Subgraph problem (2-VCSS), we are given an undirected graph $G$, and the objective is to find a 2-vertex-connected spanning subgraph $S$ of $G$ with the minimum number of edges. In the context of survivable network design, 2-VCSS is one of the most fundamental and well-studied problems. There has been active research on improving the approximation ratio of algorithms, and the current best ratio is $\frac{4}{3}$, achieved by Bosch-Calvo, Grandoni, and Jabal Ameli. In this paper, we improve the approximation ratio to $\frac{95}{72}+\varepsilon$ ($<1.32$). The key idea in our algorithm is to introduce a 2-edge-cover without certain cycle components, and use it as an initial solution.

Miguel Bosch-Calvo, Fabrizio Grandoni, Yusuke Kobayashi et al.

In the Weighted Triangle-Free 2-Matching problem (WTF2M), we are given an undirected edge-weighted graph. Our goal is to compute a maximum-weight subgraph that is a 2-matching (i.e., no node has degree more than $2$) and triangle-free (i.e., it does not contain any cycle with $3$ edges). One of the main motivations for this and related problems is their practical and theoretical connection with the Traveling Salesperson Problem and with some $2$-connectivity network design problems. WTF2M is not known to be NP-hard and at the same time no polynomial-time algorithm to solve it is known in the general case (polynomial-time algorithms are known only for some special cases). The best-known (folklore) approximation algorithm for this problem simply computes a maximum-weight 2-matching, and then drops the cheapest edge of each triangle: this gives a $2/3$ approximation. In this paper we present a PTAS for WTF2M, i.e., a polynomial-time $(1-\varepsilon)$-approximation algorithm for any given constant $\varepsilon>0$. Our result is based on a simple local-search algorithm and a non-trivial analysis.