When Agents are Powerful: Black Hole Search with Verification in Time-Varying Graphs
Abstract
A black hole is a harmful node in a graph that destroys any agent entering it, making its identification a critical task. In the Black Hole Search with Verification (BHSV) problem, a team of agents operates on a graph G with the objective that at least one agent survives and correctly identifies an edge incident to the black hole; if no black hole exists, then all agents must terminate. Prior work has studied BHS in arbitrary dynamic graphs under the restrictive face-to-face communication model, where agents can exchange information only when co-located. This constraint significantly increases the number of agents required to solve the problem. In this work, we strengthen the capabilities of agents by equipping them with (i) 1-hop visibility, (ii) global communication, and (iii) both 1-hop visibility and global communication. We show that these enhancements lead to more efficient solutions for the BHSV problem in dynamic graphs.
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