SIGACT News 26 January I97 5

AN NP-HARD PRnnLFM IN RIPARTITR GRAPH S

M .S . Krishnamoorth y
Indian Institute of TechnologY Kamnu r

Abstract :

Checking for Hamiltonian circuit in bipartite granhs is shown to be MP-hard .

Karp E21 has shown that a number of combinatorial p roblems are comnutational-
lv equivalent and difficult, known as NP-hard or NP-com p lete problems . One such
p roblem is checkin g for Hamiltonian circuit in undirected graphs, and directe d
graphs . Garev, Johnson and Stockmever [1] have investigated some of NP-hard pro-
blems for some restricted class of granhs like planar granhs, etc .

Here we will restrict the class of graphs to be b i p artite . A graph G(V .F )

is binartite iff the set of vertices V can he nartitioned into two sets ,
V 11 V such that every edge eEF can he written as (v x1 vv )1 v x eV 1 , and v v eV 2 .
21

Next we reduce the problem of checking for a directed Hamiltonian circui t

to that of checking for a Hamiltonian circuit in a bipartite graph .

Let H(p,d) be a digraph .

An undirected aranh G(V,F) is constructed as follows :

V = P x {0,1,2,3 }
F = {{ < p ,o>, <p ,l >} I px EP} U
x x
{{<n x , l > , <nx ,2>}I Px EP }
{{<p ,2 > , < 0 ,3 >}I p EP} v
x -x
{{<nx, 3> , < pv,O>}I<px, py > co }

G is bi p artite with the following two vertex set partitions :

V 1 = (<p x, n> I p x En} v {<p x ,2> I p xE P }

v 2 = {<n x ,l> I nx EP} v {<n x ,3> I n xE P }

V 1 fl V 2 = 0 and V 1 v V 2 = V, and every edge in V 1 v V2 has one terminal verte x

in V 1 and the other in V 2 .

It can he seen that H contains a Hamiltonian circuit iff. G contains a

Hamiltonian circuit ; hence the result .

References :

I . M .R . Garev, P .S . Johnson and T . Stockmever . "Some simplified NP-com p lete pro-

blems ." Proceedings Sixth Annual ACM symnosium on Theory of Com p uting . Seattle .
May 1974 . on . 47- r)/!
2 . R .M . Karp . "Reduciahility Among combinatorial Problems ." in Comnlexity of Com-
p uter Com p utations . R .F . Miller and J .W . Thatcher . ed . Plenum Press . N .Y .,nn .S5-10