Search Space Contraction in Canonical Labeling of Graphs

The individualization-refinement paradigm for computing a canonical labeling and the automorphism group of a graph is investigated. A new algorithmic design aimed at reducing the size of the associated search space is introduced, and a new tool, named "Traces", is presented, together with experimental results and comparisons with existing software, such as McKay's "nauty". It is shown that the approach presented here leads to a huge reduction in the search space, thereby making computation feasible for several classes of graphs which are hard for all the main canonical labeling tools in the literature.