Tournaments with a Transitive Subtournament as a Feedback Arc Set

Given an acyclic digraph D, we seek a smallest sized tournament T that has D as a minimum feedback arc set. The reversing number of a digraph is defined to be r(D) = |V (T)|−|V (D)| . The case where D is a tournament Tn was studied by Isaak in 1995 using an integer linear programming formulation. In particular, this approach was used to produce lower bounds for r(Tn), and it was conjectured that the given bounds were tight. We examine the class of tournaments where n = 2k +2k−2 and show the known lower bounds for r(Tn) are best possible

A Classification of Tournaments Having an Acyclic Tournament as a Minimum Feedback Arc Set

Given a tournament with an acyclic tournament as a feedback arc set we give necessary and sufficient conditions for this feedback arc set to have minimum size

An extensive English language bibliography on graph theory and its applications

Bibliography on graph theory and its application

Binets: fundamental building blocks for phylogenetic networks

Phylogenetic networks are a generalization of evolutionary trees that are used by biologists to represent the evolution of organisms which have undergone reticulate evolution. Essentially, a phylogenetic network is a directed acyclic graph having a unique root in which the leaves are labelled by a given set of species. Recently, some approaches have been developed to construct phylogenetic networks from collections of networks on 2- and 3-leaved networks, which are known as binets and trinets, respectively. Here we study in more depth properties of collections of binets, one of the simplest possible types of networks into which a phylogenetic network can be decomposed. More speci_cally, we show that if a collection of level-1 binets is compatible with some binary network, then it is also compatible with a binary level-1 network. Our proofs are based on useful structural results concerning lowest stable ancestors in networks. In addition, we show that, although the binets do not determine the topology of the network, they do determine the number of reticulations in the network, which is one of its most important parameters. We also consider algorithmic questions concerning binets. We show that deciding whether an arbitrary set of binets is compatible with some network is at least as hard as the well-known Graph Isomorphism problem. However, if we restrict to level-1 binets, it is possible to decide in polynomial time whether there exists a binary network that displays all the binets. We also show that to _nd a network that displays a maximum number of the binets is NP-hard, but that there exists a simple polynomial-time 1/3-approximation algorithm for this problem. It is hoped that these results will eventually assist in the development of new methods for constructing phylogenetic networks from collections of smaller networks

Linear Orderings of Sparse Graphs

The Linear Ordering problem consists in finding a total ordering of the vertices of a directed graph such that the number of backward arcs, i.e., arcs whose heads precede their tails in the ordering, is minimized. A minimum set of backward arcs corresponds to an optimal solution to the equivalent Feedback Arc Set problem and forms a minimum Cycle Cover. Linear Ordering and Feedback Arc Set are classic NP-hard optimization problems and have a wide range of applications. Whereas both problems have been studied intensively on dense graphs and tournaments, not much is known about their structure and properties on sparser graphs. There are also only few approximative algorithms that give performance guarantees especially for graphs with bounded vertex degree. This thesis fills this gap in multiple respects: We establish necessary conditions for a linear ordering (and thereby also for a feedback arc set) to be optimal, which provide new and fine-grained insights into the combinatorial structure of the problem. From these, we derive a framework for polynomial-time algorithms that construct linear orderings which adhere to one or more of these conditions. The analysis of the linear orderings produced by these algorithms is especially tailored to graphs with bounded vertex degrees of three and four and improves on previously known upper bounds. Furthermore, the set of necessary conditions is used to implement exact and fast algorithms for the Linear Ordering problem on sparse graphs. In an experimental evaluation, we finally show that the property-enforcing algorithms produce linear orderings that are very close to the optimum and that the exact representative delivers solutions in a timely manner also in practice. As an additional benefit, our results can be applied to the Acyclic Subgraph problem, which is the complementary problem to Feedback Arc Set, and provide insights into the dual problem of Feedback Arc Set, the Arc-Disjoint Cycles problem

Decomposing tournaments into paths

We consider a generalisation of Kelly's conjecture which is due to Alspach, Mason, and Pullman from 1976. Kelly's conjecture states that every regular tournament has an edge decomposition into Hamilton cycles, and this was proved by Kühn and Osthus for large tournaments. The conjecture of Alspach, Mason, and Pullman asks for the minimum number of paths needed in a path decomposition of a general tournament T . There is a natural lower bound for this number in terms of the degree sequence of T and it is conjectured that this bound is correct for tournaments of even order. Almost all cases of the conjecture are open and we prove many of them

Finding a subdivision of a prescribed digraph of order 4

The problem of when a given digraph contains a subdivision of a fixed digraph F is considered.Bang-Jensen et al. [2] laid out foundations for approaching this problem from the algorithmic pointof view. In this paper we give further support to several open conjectures and speculations about algorithmiccomplexity of finding F-subdivisions. In particular, up to 5 exceptions, we completely classify forwhich 4-vertex digraphs F, the F-subdivision problem is polynomial-time solvable and for which it is NPcomplete.While all NP-hardness proofs are made by reduction from some version of the 2-linkage problemin digraphs, some of the polynomial-time solvable cases involve relatively complicated algorithms