Prof. Meirav Zehavi

In the MAXIMUM-DUO PRESERVATION STRING MAPPING (MAX-DUO PSM) problem, the input consists of two related strings A and B of length n and a nonnegative integer k. The objective is to determine whether there exists a mapping m from the set of positions of A to the set of positions of B that maps only to positions with the same character and preserves at least k duos, which are pairs of adjacent positions. We develop a randomized algorithm that solves MAXDUO PSM in time 4^k · n^O(1) a deterministic algorithm that solves this problem in time 6.855^k · n^O(1). The previous best known (deterministic) algorithm for this problem has running time (8e)^2k+o(k) · n^O(1) [Beretta et al., Theor. Comput. Sci. 2016]. We also show that MAX-DUO PSM admits a problem kernel of size O(k³), improving upon the previous best known problem kernel of size O(k⁶).