Spanner Enumeration for Temporal Graphs

A spanner of a temporal graph is a subset of edges that preserves connectivity over time between vertices. A minimal spanner is one in which no additional edges can be removed without breaking this connectivity. Our focus is on enumerating minimal spanners for a given temporal graph. We explore several variations of this problem based on the type of connectivity that must be maintained, ranging from one-to-all connectivity to one-to-all-to-one, many-to-all, and finally all-to-all connectivity. We establish that these problems become progressively harder: (i) We present a polynomial-delay enumeration algorithm for one-to-all connectivity; (ii) We prove Dual-hardness for both one-toall-to-one and many-to-all connectivity, even in the restricted case of two-to-all; (iii) Finally, for all-to-all connectivity, we show that enumeration cannot be performed in output-polynomial time unless P = NP.