15 research outputs found
Kernel Bounds for Path and Cycle Problems
Connectivity problems like k-Path and k-Disjoint Paths relate to many
important milestones in parameterized complexity, namely the Graph Minors
Project, color coding, and the recent development of techniques for obtaining
kernelization lower bounds. This work explores the existence of polynomial
kernels for various path and cycle problems, by considering nonstandard
parameterizations. We show polynomial kernels when the parameters are a given
vertex cover, a modulator to a cluster graph, or a (promised) max leaf number.
We obtain lower bounds via cross-composition, e.g., for Hamiltonian Cycle and
related problems when parameterized by a modulator to an outerplanar graph
Meta-Kernelization using Well-Structured Modulators
Kernelization investigates exact preprocessing algorithms with performance
guarantees. The most prevalent type of parameters used in kernelization is the
solution size for optimization problems; however, also structural parameters
have been successfully used to obtain polynomial kernels for a wide range of
problems. Many of these parameters can be defined as the size of a smallest
modulator of the given graph into a fixed graph class (i.e., a set of vertices
whose deletion puts the graph into the graph class). Such parameters admit the
construction of polynomial kernels even when the solution size is large or not
applicable. This work follows up on the research on meta-kernelization
frameworks in terms of structural parameters.
We develop a class of parameters which are based on a more general view on
modulators: instead of size, the parameters employ a combination of rank-width
and split decompositions to measure structure inside the modulator. This allows
us to lift kernelization results from modulator-size to more general
parameters, hence providing smaller kernels. We show (i) how such large but
well-structured modulators can be efficiently approximated, (ii) how they can
be used to obtain polynomial kernels for any graph problem expressible in
Monadic Second Order logic, and (iii) how they allow the extension of previous
results in the area of structural meta-kernelization
Hierarchies of Inefficient Kernelizability
The framework of Bodlaender et al. (ICALP 2008) and Fortnow and Santhanam
(STOC 2008) allows us to exclude the existence of polynomial kernels for a
range of problems under reasonable complexity-theoretical assumptions. However,
there are also some issues that are not addressed by this framework, including
the existence of Turing kernels such as the "kernelization" of Leaf Out
Branching(k) into a disjunction over n instances of size poly(k). Observing
that Turing kernels are preserved by polynomial parametric transformations, we
define a kernelization hardness hierarchy, akin to the M- and W-hierarchy of
ordinary parameterized complexity, by the PPT-closure of problems that seem
likely to be fundamentally hard for efficient Turing kernelization. We find
that several previously considered problems are complete for our fundamental
hardness class, including Min Ones d-SAT(k), Binary NDTM Halting(k), Connected
Vertex Cover(k), and Clique(k log n), the clique problem parameterized by k log
n