Twin-width (Édouard Bonnet)
Channel: IRIF
Date: 2020-09-29

Inspired by an invariant defined on permutations by Guillemot and Marx [SODA '14], we introduce the notion of twin-width on graphs and on matrices. Proper minor-closed classes, bounded rank-width graphs, $K_t$-free unit ball graphs, posets with antichains of bounded size, and proper subclasses of permutation graphs all have bounded twin-width. On all these classes we will see how to compute in polynomial time a sequence of d-contractions, witness that the twin-width is at most d. FO model checking, that is deciding if a given first-order formula $\phi$ evaluates to true on a given binary structure G on a domain D, happens to be FPT in $|\phi|$ on classes of bounded twin-width, provided the witness is given. More precisely, being given a d-contraction sequence for G, our algorithm runs in time $f(d,|\phi|) |D|$ where f is a computable but non-elementary function. We will also see that bounded twin-width is preserved by FO interpretations and transductions. This unifies and significantly extends the knowledge on fixed-parameter tractability of FO model checking on non-monotone classes, such as the FPT algorithm on bounded-width posets by Gajarsky et al. [FOCS '15]. Finally we mention a curious connection between bounded twin-width and small classes.

Joint work with Colin Geniet, Eun Jung Kim, Stéphan Thomassé, and Rémi Watrigant