Analysis of parallel algorithms for finding a maximal independent set in a random hypergraph

It is well known 9] that nding a maximal independent set in a graph is in class N C, and 10] that nding a maximal independent set in a hypergraph with xed dimension is in RN C. It is not known whether this latter problem remains in N C when the dimension is part of the input. We will study the problem when the problem instances are randomly chosen. It was shown in 6] that the expected running time of a simple parallel algorithm for nding the lexicographically rst maximal independent set (lfmis) in a random simple graph is logarithmic in the input size. In this paper, we will prove a generalization of this result. We show that if a random k-uniform hypergraph has vertex set f1; 2; : : : ; ng and its edges are chosen independently with probability p from the set of ? n k possible edges, then our algorithm nds the lfmis