Domination in transitive colorings of tournaments

An edge coloring of a tournament T with colors 1,2,…,k is called \it k-transitive \rm if the digraph T(i) defined by the edges of color i is transitively oriented for each 1≤i≤k. We explore a conjecture of the second author: For each positive integer k there exists a (least) p(k) such that every k-transitive tournament has a dominating set of at most p(k) vertices. We show how this conjecture relates to other conjectures and results. For example, it is a special case of a well-known conjecture of Erd\H os, Sands, Sauer and Woodrow (so the conjecture is interesting even if false). We show that the conjecture implies a stronger conjecture, a possible extension of a result of B\'ar\'any and Lehel on covering point sets by boxes. The principle used leads also to an upper bound O(22d−1dlogd) on the d-dimensional box-cover number that is better than all previous bounds, in a sense close to best possible. We also improve the best bound known in 3-dimensions from 314 to 64 and propose possible further improvements through finding the maximum domination number over parity tournaments

The Complexity of Computing Minimal Unidirectional Covering Sets

Given a binary dominance relation on a set of alternatives, a common thread in the social sciences is to identify subsets of alternatives that satisfy certain notions of stability. Examples can be found in areas as diverse as voting theory, game theory, and argumentation theory. Brandt and Fischer [BF08] proved that it is NP-hard to decide whether an alternative is contained in some inclusion-minimal upward or downward covering set. For both problems, we raise this lower bound to the Theta_{2}^{p} level of the polynomial hierarchy and provide a Sigma_{2}^{p} upper bound. Relatedly, we show that a variety of other natural problems regarding minimal or minimum-size covering sets are hard or complete for either of NP, coNP, and Theta_{2}^{p}. An important consequence of our results is that neither minimal upward nor minimal downward covering sets (even when guaranteed to exist) can be computed in polynomial time unless P=NP. This sharply contrasts with Brandt and Fischer's result that minimal bidirectional covering sets (i.e., sets that are both minimal upward and minimal downward covering sets) are polynomial-time computable.Comment: 27 pages, 7 figure