Subgraph Counting in Subquadratic Time for Bounded Degeneracy Graphs

We study the classic problem of subgraph counting, where we wish to determine the number of occurrences of a fixed pattern graph $H$ in an input graph $G$ of $n$ vertices. Our focus is on bounded degeneracy inputs, a rich family of graph classes that also characterizes real-world massive networks. Building on the seminal techniques introduced by Chiba-Nishizeki (SICOMP 1985), a recent line of work has built subgraph counting algorithms for bounded degeneracy graphs. Assuming fine-grained complexity conjectures, there is a complete characterization of patterns $H$ for which linear time subgraph counting is possible. For every $r \geq 6$, there exists an $H$ with $r$ vertices that cannot be counted in linear time. In this paper, we initiate a study of subquadratic algorithms for subgraph counting on bounded degeneracy graphs. We prove that when $H$ has at most $9$ vertices, subgraph counting can be done in $\tilde{O}(n^{5/3})$ time. As a secondary result, we give improved algorithms for counting cycles of length at most $10$. Previously, no subquadratic algorithms were known for the above problems on bounded degeneracy graphs. Our main conceptual contribution is a framework that reduces subgraph counting in bounded degeneracy graphs to counting smaller hypergraphs in arbitrary graphs. We believe that our results will help build a general theory of subgraph counting for bounded degeneracy graphs.