Dynamic Meta-theorems for Distance and Matching

Reachability, distance, and matching are some of the most fundamental graph problems that have been of particular interest in dynamic complexity theory in recent years [DKMSZ18, DMVZ18, DKMTVZ20]. Reachability can be maintained with first-order update formulas, or equivalently in DynFO in general graphs with n nodes [DKMSZ18], even under O(log n/loglog n) changes per step [DMVZ18]. In the context of how large the number of changes can be handled, it has recently been shown [DKMTVZ20] that under a polylogarithmic number of changes, reachability is in DynFOpar in planar, bounded treewidth, and related graph classes -- in fact in any graph where small non-zero circulation weights can be computed in NC. We continue this line of investigation and extend the meta-theorem for reachability to distance and bipartite maximum matching with the same bounds. These are amongst the most general classes of graphs known where we can maintain these problems deterministically without using a majority quantifier and even maintain witnesses. For the bipartite matching result, modifying the approach from [FGT], we convert the static non-zero circulation weights to dynamic matching-isolating weights. While reachability is in DynFOar under O(log n/loglog n) changes, no such bound is known for either distance or matching in any non-trivial class of graphs under non-constant changes. We show that, in the same classes of graphs as before, bipartite maximum matching is in DynFOar under O(log n/loglog n) changes per step. En route to showing this we prove that the rank of a matrix can be maintained in DynFOar, also under O(log n/loglog n) entry changes, improving upon the previous O(1) bound [DKMSZ18]. This implies similar extension for the non-uniform DynFO bound for maximum matching in general graphs and an alternate algorithm for maintaining reachability under O(log n/loglog n) changes [DMVZ18].