Domination Problems in Nowhere-Dense Classes

We investigate the parameterized complexity of generalisations and variations of the dominating set problem on classes of graphs that are nowhere dense. In particular, we show that the distance-$d$ dominating-set problem, also known as the $(k,d)$-centres problem, is fixed-parameter tractable on any class that is nowhere dense and closed under induced subgraphs. This generalises known results about the dominating set problem on $H$-minor free classes, classes with locally excluded minors and classes of graphs of bounded expansion. A key feature of our proof is that it is based simply on the fact that these graph classes are uniformly quasi-wide, and does not rely on a structural decomposition. Our result also establishes that the distance-$d$ dominating-set problem is FPT on classes of bounded expansion, answering a question of Ne{v s}et{v r}il and Ossona de Mendez

Nowhere dense graph classes, stability, and the independence property

A class of graphs is nowhere dense if for every integer r there is a finite upper bound on the size of cliques that occur as (topological) r-minors. We observe that this tameness notion from algorithmic graph theory is essentially the earlier stability theoretic notion of superflatness. For subgraph-closed classes of graphs we prove equivalence to stability and to not having the independence property.Comment: 9 page

Reconfiguration on sparse graphs

A vertex-subset graph problem Q defines which subsets of the vertices of an input graph are feasible solutions. A reconfiguration variant of a vertex-subset problem asks, given two feasible solutions S and T of size k, whether it is possible to transform S into T by a sequence of vertex additions and deletions such that each intermediate set is also a feasible solution of size bounded by k. We study reconfiguration variants of two classical vertex-subset problems, namely Independent Set and Dominating Set. We denote the former by ISR and the latter by DSR. Both ISR and DSR are PSPACE-complete on graphs of bounded bandwidth and W[1]-hard parameterized by k on general graphs. We show that ISR is fixed-parameter tractable parameterized by k when the input graph is of bounded degeneracy or nowhere-dense. As a corollary, we answer positively an open question concerning the parameterized complexity of the problem on graphs of bounded treewidth. Moreover, our techniques generalize recent results showing that ISR is fixed-parameter tractable on planar graphs and graphs of bounded degree. For DSR, we show the problem fixed-parameter tractable parameterized by k when the input graph does not contain large bicliques, a class of graphs which includes graphs of bounded degeneracy and nowhere-dense graphs

On Directed Covering and Domination Problems

In this paper, we study covering and domination problems on directed graphs. Although undirected Vertex Cover and Edge Dominating Set are well-studied classical graph problems, the directed versions have not been studied much due to the lack of clear definitions. We give natural definitions for Directed r-In (Out) Vertex Cover and Directed (p,q)-Edge Dominating Set as directed generations of Vertex Cover and Edge Dominating Set. For these problems, we show that (1) Directed r-In (Out) Vertex Cover and Directed (p,q)-Edge Dominating Set are NP-complete on planar directed acyclic graphs except when r=1 or (p,q)=(0,0), (2) if r>=2, Directed r-In (Out) Vertex Cover is W[2]-hard and (c*ln k)-inapproximable on directed acyclic graphs, (3) if either p or q is greater than 1, Directed (p,q)-Edge Dominating Set is W[2]-hard and (c*ln k)-inapproximable on directed acyclic graphs, (4) all problems can be solved in polynomial time on trees, and (5) Directed (0,1),(1,0),(1,1)-Edge Dominating Set are fixed-parameter tractable in general graphs. The first result implies that (directed) r-Dominating Set on directed line graphs is NP-complete even if r=1

Empirical Evaluation of Approximation Algorithms for Generalized Graph Coloring and Uniform Quasi-Wideness

The notions of bounded expansion and nowhere denseness not only offer robust and general definitions of uniform sparseness of graphs, they also describe the tractability boundary for several important algorithmic questions. In this paper we study two structural properties of these graph classes that are of particular importance in this context, namely the property of having bounded generalized coloring numbers and the property of being uniformly quasi-wide. We provide experimental evaluations of several algorithms that approximate these parameters on real-world graphs. On the theoretical side, we provide a new algorithm for uniform quasi-wideness with polynomial size guarantees in graph classes of bounded expansion and show a lower bound indicating that the guarantees of this algorithm are close to optimal in graph classes with fixed excluded minor