Arc-Disjoint Paths and Trees in 2-Regular Digraphs

An out-(in-)branching B_s^+ (B_s^-) rooted at s in a digraph D is a connected spanning subdigraph of D in which every vertex x != s has precisely one arc entering (leaving) it and s has no arcs entering (leaving) it. We settle the complexity of the following two problems: 1) Given a 2-regular digraph $D$, decide if it contains two arc-disjoint branchings B^+_u, B^-_v. 2) Given a 2-regular digraph D, decide if it contains an out-branching B^+_u such that D remains connected after removing the arcs of B^+_u. Both problems are NP-complete for general digraphs. We prove that the first problem remains NP-complete for 2-regular digraphs, whereas the second problem turns out to be polynomial when we do not prescribe the root in advance. We also prove that, for 2-regular digraphs, the latter problem is in fact equivalent to deciding if $D$ contains two arc-disjoint out-branchings. We generalize this result to k-regular digraphs where we want to find a number of pairwise arc-disjoint spanning trees and out-branchings such that there are k in total, again without prescribing any roots.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figure

On Complexity of Minimum Leaf Out-branching Problem

Given a digraph $D$, the Minimum Leaf Out-Branching problem (MinLOB) is the problem of finding in $D$ an out-branching with the minimum possible number of leaves, i.e., vertices of out-degree 0. Gutin, Razgon and Kim (2008) proved that MinLOB is polynomial time solvable for acyclic digraphs which are exactly the digraphs of directed path-width (DAG-width, directed tree-width, respectively) 0. We investigate how much one can extend this polynomiality result. We prove that already for digraphs of directed path-width (directed tree-width, DAG-width, respectively) 1, MinLOB is NP-hard. On the other hand, we show that for digraphs of restricted directed tree-width (directed path-width, DAG-width, respectively) and a fixed integer $k$, the problem of checking whether there is an out-branching with at most $k$ leaves is polynomial time solvable

Arc-disjoint out- and in-branchings in compositions of digraphs

An out-branching $B^+_u$ (in-branching $B^-_u$) in a digraph $D$ is a connected spanning subdigraph of $D$ in which every vertex except the vertex $u$, called the root, has in-degree (out-degree) one. A {\bf good $\mathbf{(u,v)}$-pair} in $D$ is a pair of branchings $B^+_u,B^-_v$ which have no arc in common. Thomassen proved that is NP-complete to decide if a digraph has any good pair. A digraph is {\bf semicomplete} if it has no pair of non adjacent vertices. A {\bf semicomplete composition} is any digraph $D$ which is obtained from a semicomplete digraph $S$ by substituting an arbitrary digraph $H_x$ for each vertex $x$ of $S$. Recently the authors of this paper gave a complete classification of semicomplete digraphs which have a good $(u,v)$-pair, where $u,v$ are prescribed vertices of $D$. They also gave a polynomial algorithm which for a given semicomplete digraph $D$ and vertices $u,v$ of $D$, either produces a good $(u,v)$-pair in $D$ or a certificate that $D$ has such pair. In this paper we show how to use the result for semicomplete digraphs to completely solve the problem of deciding whether a given semicomplete composition $D$, has a good $(u,v)$-pair for given vertices $u,v$ of $D$. Our solution implies that the problem is polynomially solvable for all semicomplete compositions. In particular our result implies that there is a polynomial algorithm for deciding whether a given quasi-transitive digraph $D$ has a good $(u,v)$-pair for given vertices $u,v$ of $D$. This confirms a conjecture of Bang-Jensen and Gutin from 1998

Arc-disjoint in- and out-branchings rooted at the same vertex in compositions of digraphs

A digraph $D=(V, A)$ has a good pair at a vertex $r$ if $D$ has a pair of arc-disjoint in- and out-branchings rooted at $r$. Let $T$ be a digraph with $t$ vertices $u_1,\dots , u_t$ and let $H_1,\dots H_t$ be digraphs such that $H_i$ has vertices $u_{i,j_i},\ 1\le j_i\le n_i.$ Then the composition $Q=T[H_1,\dots , H_t]$ is a digraph with vertex set $\{u_{i,j_i}\mid 1\le i\le t, 1\le j_i\le n_i\}$ and arc set $$A(Q)=\cup^t_{i=1}A(H_i)\cup \{u_{ij_i}u_{pq_p}\mid u_iu_p\in A(T), 1\le j_i\le n_i, 1\le q_p\le n_p\}.$$ When $T$ is arbitrary, we obtain the following result: every strong digraph composition $Q$ in which $n_i\ge 2$ for every $1\leq i\leq t$, has a good pair at every vertex of $Q.$ The condition of $n_i\ge 2$ in this result cannot be relaxed. When $T$ is semicomplete, we characterize semicomplete compositions with a good pair, which generalizes the corresponding characterization by Bang-Jensen and Huang (J. Graph Theory, 1995) for quasi-transitive digraphs. As a result, we can decide in polynomial time whether a given semicomplete composition has a good pair rooted at a given vertex