Hypergraph Traversal Revisited: Cost Measures and Dynamic Algorithms

Directed hypergraphs are used in several applications to model different combinatorial structures. A directed hypergraph is defined by a set of nodes and a set of hyperarcs, each connecting a set of source nodes to a single target node. A hyperpath, similarly to the notion of path in directed graphs, consists of a connection among nodes using hyperarcs. Unlike paths in graphs, however, hyperpaths are suitable of many different definitions of measure, corresponding to different concepts arising in various applications. In this paper we consider the problem of finding optimal hyperpaths according to several measures. We also provide results that may shed some light on the intrinsic complexity of finding optimal hyperpaths.