Parameterized Complexity of Temporal Agony

Abstract

Real-world networks are often organized in several layers forming a hierarchy which determines the interaction between the individual components. In order to discover such hierarchies in temporal networks, Tatti [ECML PKDD 2018] introduced the temporal agony problem Seg-Agony. Here, the goal is to assign each vertex a certain rank (from 1 to $k$) such that arcs only point from lower ranks to higher ranks. Backward arcs are penalized depending on the difference between the corresponding ranks. Since arcs may change over time, each vertex is allowed to change its rank $\ell \ge 1$ times in order to minimize the overall penalty $\alpha$ (called temporal agony). We study the parameterized complexity of Seg-Agony with a special focus on the number $k$ of possible ranks for which we identify the precise complexity border. We show that the problem is polynomial-time solvable for $k=2$, NP-hard for $k=3$ and $\ell =1$ but polynomial-time solvable for constant $\alpha$, and NP-hard for $k=4$ and $\ell =1$ even for $\alpha =0$. We further show a polynomial-time algorithm for a constant number $n$ of vertices and fixed-parameter tractability for the combined parameter $n+\ell$.

To appear at ALGOWIN 2026