Counting and Enumerating Optimum Cut Sets for Hypergraph k-Partitioning Problems for Fixed k

We consider the problem of enumerating optimal solutions for two hypergraph k-partitioning problems - namely, Hypergraph-k-Cut and Minmax-Hypergraph-k-Partition. The input in hypergraph k-partitioning problems is a hypergraph G = (V, E) with positive hyperedge costs along with a fixed positive integer k. The goal is to find a partition of V into k non-empty parts (V₁, V₂,..., V_k) - known as a k-partition - so as to minimize an objective of interest. 1. If the objective of interest is the maximum cut value of the parts, then the problem is known as Minmax-Hypergraph-k-Partition. A subset of hyperedges is a minmax-k-cut-set if it is the subset of hyperedges crossing an optimum k-partition for Minmax-Hypergraph-k-Partition. 2. If the objective of interest is the total cost of hyperedges crossing the k-partition, then the problem is known as Hypergraph-k-Cut. A subset of hyperedges is a min-k-cut-set if it is the subset of hyperedges crossing an optimum k-partition for Hypergraph-k-Cut. We give the first polynomial bound on the number of minmax-k-cut-sets and a polynomial-time algorithm to enumerate all of them in hypergraphs for every fixed k. Our technique is strong enough to also enable an n^O(k)p-time deterministic algorithm to enumerate all min-k-cut-sets in hypergraphs, thus improving on the previously known n^O(k2)p-time deterministic algorithm, where n is the number of vertices and p is the size of the hypergraph. The correctness analysis of our enumeration approach relies on a structural result that is a strong and unifying generalization of known structural results for Hypergraph-k-Cut and Minmax-Hypergraph-k-Partition. We believe that our structural result is likely to be of independent interest in the theory of hypergraphs (and graphs).