Restricted frame graphs and a conjecture of Scott

Scott proved in 1997 that for any tree $T$, every graph with bounded clique number which does not contain any subdivision of $T$ as an induced subgraph has bounded chromatic number. Scott also conjectured that the same should hold if $T$ is replaced by any graph $H$. Pawlik et al. recently constructed a family of triangle-free intersection graphs of segments in the plane with unbounded chromatic number (thereby disproving an old conjecture of Erd\H{o}s). This shows that Scott's conjecture is false whenever $H$ is obtained from a non-planar graph by subdividing every edge at least once. It remains interesting to decide which graphs $H$ satisfy Scott's conjecture and which do not. In this paper, we study the construction of Pawlik et al. in more details to extract more counterexamples to Scott's conjecture. For example, we show that Scott's conjecture is false for any graph obtained from $K_4$ by subdividing every edge at least once. We also prove that if $G$ is a 2-connected multigraph with no vertex contained in every cycle of $G$, then any graph obtained from $G$ by subdividing every edge at least twice is a counterexample to Scott's conjecture.Comment: 21 pages, 8 figures - Revised version (note that we moved some of our results to an appendix

Digraph Complexity Measures and Applications in Formal Language Theory

We investigate structural complexity measures on digraphs, in particular the cycle rank. This concept is intimately related to a classical topic in formal language theory, namely the star height of regular languages. We explore this connection, and obtain several new algorithmic insights regarding both cycle rank and star height. Among other results, we show that computing the cycle rank is NP-complete, even for sparse digraphs of maximum outdegree 2. Notwithstanding, we provide both a polynomial-time approximation algorithm and an exponential-time exact algorithm for this problem. The former algorithm yields an O((log n)^(3/2))- approximation in polynomial time, whereas the latter yields the optimum solution, and runs in time and space O*(1.9129^n) on digraphs of maximum outdegree at most two. Regarding the star height problem, we identify a subclass of the regular languages for which we can precisely determine the computational complexity of the star height problem. Namely, the star height problem for bideterministic languages is NP-complete, and this holds already for binary alphabets. Then we translate the algorithmic results concerning cycle rank to the bideterministic star height problem, thus giving a polynomial-time approximation as well as a reasonably fast exact exponential algorithm for bideterministic star height.Comment: 19 pages, 1 figur

Solving the undirected feedback vertex set problem by local search

An undirected graph consists of a set of vertices and a set of undirected edges between vertices. Such a graph may contain an abundant number of cycles, then a feedback vertex set (FVS) is a set of vertices intersecting with each of these cycles. Constructing a FVS of cardinality approaching the global minimum value is a optimization problem in the nondeterministic polynomial-complete complexity class, therefore it might be extremely difficult for some large graph instances. In this paper we develop a simulated annealing local search algorithm for the undirected FVS problem. By defining an order for the vertices outside the FVS, we replace the global cycle constraints by a set of local vertex constraints on this order. Under these local constraints the cardinality of the focal FVS is then gradually reduced by the simulated annealing dynamical process. We test this heuristic algorithm on large instances of Er\"odos-Renyi random graph and regular random graph, and find that this algorithm is comparable in performance to the belief propagation-guided decimation algorithm.Comment: 6 page

Constrained Ramsey Numbers

For two graphs S and T, the constrained Ramsey number f(S, T) is the minimum n such that every edge coloring of the complete graph on n vertices, with any number of colors, has a monochromatic subgraph isomorphic to S or a rainbow (all edges differently colored) subgraph isomorphic to T. The Erdos-Rado Canonical Ramsey Theorem implies that f(S, T) exists if and only if S is a star or T is acyclic, and much work has been done to determine the rate of growth of f(S, T) for various types of parameters. When S and T are both trees having s and t edges respectively, Jamison, Jiang, and Ling showed that f(S, T) <= O(st^2) and conjectured that it is always at most O(st). They also mentioned that one of the most interesting open special cases is when T is a path. In this work, we study this case and show that f(S, P_t) = O(st log t), which differs only by a logarithmic factor from the conjecture. This substantially improves the previous bounds for most values of s and t.Comment: 12 pages; minor revision

Seymour's second neighborhood conjecture for tournaments missing a generalized star

Seymour's Second Neighborhood Conjecture asserts that every digraph (without digons) has a vertex whose first out-neighborhood is at most as large as its second out-neighborhood. We prove its weighted version for tournaments missing a generalized star. As a consequence the weighted version holds for tournaments missing a sun, star, or a complete graph.Comment: Accepted for publication in Journal of Graph Theory in 24 June 201

Parameterized Approximation Schemes for Steiner Trees with Small Number of Steiner Vertices

We study the Steiner Tree problem, in which a set of terminal vertices needs to be connected in the cheapest possible way in an edge-weighted graph. This problem has been extensively studied from the viewpoint of approximation and also parametrization. In particular, on one hand Steiner Tree is known to be APX-hard, and W[2]-hard on the other, if parameterized by the number of non-terminals (Steiner vertices) in the optimum solution. In contrast to this we give an efficient parameterized approximation scheme (EPAS), which circumvents both hardness results. Moreover, our methods imply the existence of a polynomial size approximate kernelization scheme (PSAKS) for the considered parameter. We further study the parameterized approximability of other variants of Steiner Tree, such as Directed Steiner Tree and Steiner Forest. For neither of these an EPAS is likely to exist for the studied parameter: for Steiner Forest an easy observation shows that the problem is APX-hard, even if the input graph contains no Steiner vertices. For Directed Steiner Tree we prove that approximating within any function of the studied parameter is W[1]-hard. Nevertheless, we show that an EPAS exists for Unweighted Directed Steiner Tree, but a PSAKS does not. We also prove that there is an EPAS and a PSAKS for Steiner Forest if in addition to the number of Steiner vertices, the number of connected components of an optimal solution is considered to be a parameter.Comment: 23 pages, 6 figures An extended abstract appeared in proceedings of STACS 201