The parametric closure problem

Abstract

We define the parametric closure problem, in which the input is a partially ordered set whose elements have linearly varying weights and the goal is to compute the sequence of minimum-weight lower sets of the partial order as the weights vary. We give polynomial time solutions to many important special cases of this problem including semiorders, reachability orders of bounded-tree width graphs, partial orders of bounded width, and series-parallel partial orders. Our result for series-parallel orders provides a significant generalization of a previous result of Carlson and Eppstein on bicriterion subtree problems.