Asymmetric graph alignment and the phase transition for asymmetric tree correlation testing

Graph alignment – identifying node correspondences between two graphs – is a fundamental problem with applications in network analysis, biology, and privacy research. While substantial progress has been made in aligning correlated Erdős–Rényi graphs under symmetric settings, real-world networks often exhibit asymmetry in both node numbers and edge densities. In this work, we introduce a novel framework for asymmetric correlated Erdős–Rényi graphs, generalizing existing models to account for these asymmetries. We conduct a rigorous theoretical analysis of graph alignment in the sparse regime, where local neighborhoods exhibit tree-like structures. Our approach leverages tree correlation testing as the central tool in our polynomial-time algorithm, MPAʟɪɢɴ, which achieves one-sided partial alignment under certain conditions.A key contribution of our work is characterizing these conditions under which asymmetric tree correlation testing is feasible: If two correlated graphs G and G' have average degrees \lambda s and \lambda s' respectively, where \lambda is their common density and s,s' are marginal correlation parameters, their tree neighborhoods can be aligned if ss' > \alpha , where \alpha denotes Otter’s constant and \lambda is supposed large enough. The feasibility of this tree comparison problem undergoes a sharp phase transition since ss' \leq \alpha implies its impossibility. These new results on tree correlation testing allow us to solve a class of random subgraph isomorphism problems, resolving an open problem in the field.