No Arabic abstract
The $k$-leaf power graph $G$ of a tree $T$ is a graph whose vertices are the leaves of $T$ and whose edges connect pairs of leaves at unweighted distance at most~$k$ in $T$. Recognition of the $k$-leaf power graphs for $k geq 7$ is still an open problem. In this paper, we provide two algorithms for this problem for sparse leaf power graphs. Our results shows that the problem of recognizing these graphs is fixed-parameter tractable when parameterized both by $k$ and by the degeneracy of the given graph. To prove this, we first describe how to embed the leaf root of a leaf power graph into a product of the graph with a cycle graph. We bound the treewidth of the resulting product in terms of $k$ and the degeneracy of $G$. The first presented algorithm uses methods based on monadic second-order logic (MSO$_2$) to recognize the existence of a leaf power as a subgraph of the product graph. Using the same embedding in the product graph, the second algorithm presents a dynamic programming approach to solve the problem and provide a better dependence on the parameters.
It was shown recently by Fakcharoenphol et al that arbitrary finite metrics can be embedded into distributions over tree metrics with distortion O(log n). It is also known that this bound is tight since there are expander graphs which cannot be embedded into distributions over trees with better than Omega(log n) distortion. We show that this same lower bound holds for embeddings into distributions over any minor excluded family. Given a family of graphs F which excludes minor M where |M|=k, we explicitly construct a family of graphs with treewidth-(k+1) which cannot be embedded into a distribution over F with better than Omega(log n) distortion. Thus, while these minor excluded families of graphs are more expressive than trees, they do not provide asymptotically better approximations in general. An important corollary of this is that graphs of treewidth-k cannot be embedded into distributions over graphs of treewidth-(k-3) with distortion less than Omega(log n). We also extend a result of Alon et al by showing that for any k, planar graphs cannot be embedded into distributions over treewidth-k graphs with better than Omega(log n) distortion.
For any collection of graphs we find the minimal dimension d such that the product of these graphs is embeddable into the d-dimensional Euclidean space. In particular, we prove that the n-th powers of the Kuratowsky graphs are not embeddable into the 2n-dimensional Euclidean space. This is a solution of a problem of Menger from 1929. The idea of the proof is the reduction to a problem from so-called Ramsey link theory: we show that any embedding of L into the (2n-1)-dimensional sphere, where L is the join of n copies of a 4-point set, has a pair of linked (n-1)-dimensional spheres.
Graph-modification problems, where we add/delete a small number of vertices/edges to make the given graph to belong to a simpler graph class, is a well-studied optimization problem in all algorithmic paradigms including classical, approximation and parameterized complexity. Specifically, graph-deletion problems, where one needs to delete at most $k$ vertices to place it in a given non-trivial hereditary (closed under induced subgraphs) graph class, captures several well-studied problems including {sc Vertex Cover}, {sc Feedback Vertex Set}, {sc Odd Cycle Transveral}, {sc Cluster Vertex Deletion}, and {sc Perfect Deletion}. Investigation into these problems in parameterized complexity has given rise to powerful tools and techniques. While a precise characterization of the graph classes for which the problem is {it fixed-parameter tractable} (FPT) is elusive, it has long been known that if the graph class is characterized by a {it finite} set of forbidden graphs, then the problem is FPT. In this paper, we initiate a study of a natural variation of the problem of deletion to {it scattered graph classes} where we need to delete at most $k$ vertices so that in the resulting graph, each connected component belongs to one of a constant number of graph classes. A simple hitting set based approach is no longer feasible even if each of the graph classes is characterized by finite forbidden sets. As our main result, we show that this problem is fixed-parameter tractable (FPT) when the deletion problem corresponding to each of the finite classes is known to be FPT and the properties that a graph belongs to each of the classes is expressible in CMSO logic. When each graph class has a finite forbidden set, we give a faster FPT algorithm using the well-known techniques of iterative compression and important separators.
The Graph Motif problem was introduced in 2006 in the context of biological networks. It consists of deciding whether or not a multiset of colors occurs in a connected subgraph of a vertex-colored graph. Graph Motif has been mostly analyzed from the standpoint of parameterized complexity. The main parameters which came into consideration were the size of the multiset and the number of colors. Though, in the many applications of Graph Motif, the input graph originates from real-life and has structure. Motivated by this prosaic observation, we systematically study its complexity relatively to graph structural parameters. For a wide range of parameters, we give new or improved FPT algorithms, or show that the problem remains intractable. For the FPT cases, we also give some kernelization lower bounds as well as some ETH-based lower bounds on the worst case running time. Interestingly, we establish that Graph Motif is W[1]-hard (while in W[P]) for parameter max leaf number, which is, to the best of our knowledge, the first problem to behave this way.
A skew-symmetric graph $(D=(V,A),sigma)$ is a directed graph $D$ with an involution $sigma$ on the set of vertices and arcs. In this paper, we introduce a separation problem, $d$-Skew-Symmetric Multicut, where we are given a skew-symmetric graph $D$, a family of $cal T$ of $d$-sized subsets of vertices and an integer $k$. The objective is to decide if there is a set $Xsubseteq A$ of $k$ arcs such that every set $J$ in the family has a vertex $v$ such that $v$ and $sigma(v)$ are in different connected components of $D=(V,Asetminus (Xcup sigma(X))$. In this paper, we give an algorithm for this problem which runs in time $O((4d)^{k}(m+n+ell))$, where $m$ is the number of arcs in the graph, $n$ the number of vertices and $ell$ the length of the family given in the input. Using our algorithm, we show that Almost 2-SAT has an algorithm with running time $O(4^kk^4ell)$ and we obtain algorithms for {sc Odd Cycle Transversal} and {sc Edge Bipartization} which run in time $O(4^kk^4(m+n))$ and $O(4^kk^5(m+n))$ respectively. This resolves an open problem posed by Reed, Smith and Vetta [Operations Research Letters, 2003] and improves upon the earlier almost linear time algorithm of Kawarabayashi and Reed [SODA, 2010]. We also show that Deletion q-Horn Backdoor Set Detection is a special case of 3-Skew-Symmetric Multicut, giving us an algorithm for Deletion q-Horn Backdoor Set Detection which runs in time $O(12^kk^5ell)$. This gives the first fixed-parameter tractable algorithm for this problem answering a question posed in a paper by a superset of the authors [STACS, 2013]. Using this result, we get an algorithm for Satisfiability which runs in time $O(12^kk^5ell)$ where $k$ is the size of the smallest q-Horn deletion backdoor set, with $ell$ being the length of the input formula.