On packing arborescences in temporal networks

A temporal network is a directed graph in which each arc has a time label specifying the time at which its end vertices communicate. An arborescence in a temporal network is said to be time-respecting, if the time labels on every directed path from the root in this arborescence are monotonically non-decreasing. In this paper, we consider a characterization of the existence of arc-disjoint time-respecting arborescences in temporal networks. •We give a characterization for packing arborescences in acyclic temporal networks.•Our characterization gives a polynomial-time algorithm for finding arc-disjoint arborescences in acyclic temporal networks.