The Complexity Of Pebbling Reachability And Solvability In Planar And Outerplanar Graphs

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

7-31-2014

Publication Source

Discrete Applied Mathematics

Volume Number

172

First Page

62

Last Page

74

Publisher

Elsevier Science BV

ISSN

0166-218X

Abstract

Given a simple, connected graph, a pebbling configuration is a function from its vertex set to the nonnegative integers. A pebbling move between adjacent vertices removes two pebbles from one vertex and adds one pebble to the other. A vertex r is said to be reachable from a configuration if there exists a sequence of pebbling moves that places at least one pebble on r. A configuration is solvable if every vertex is reachable. We prove that determining reachability of a vertex and solvability of a configuration are NP-complete on planar graphs. We also prove that both reachability and solvability can be determined in O(n6)time on planar graphs with diameter two. Finally, for outerplanar graphs, we present a linear algorithm for determining reachability and a quadratic algorithm for determining solvability. To prove this result, we provide linear algorithms to determine all possible maximal configurations of pebbles that can be placed on the endpoints of a path and on two adjacent vertices in a cycle.

Keywords

Graph Pebbling, Planar, Outerplanar, NP-complete, Diameter 2 Graphs, Cycles

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