On Polynomial Kernelization of H-free Edge Deletion

For a set H of graphs, the H-free Edge Deletion problem is to decide whether there exist at most k edges in the input graph, for some k∈N, whose deletion results in a graph without an induced copy of any of the graphs in H . The problem is known to be fixed-parameter tractable if H is of finite cardinality. In this paper, we present a polynomial kernel for this problem for any fixed finite set H of connected graphs for the case where the input graphs are of bounded degree. We use a single kernelization rule which deletes vertices ‘far away’ from the induced copies of every H∈H in the input graph. With a slightly modified kernelization rule, we obtain polynomial kernels for H-free Edge Deletion under the following three settings

On Polynomial Kernelization of H\mathcal{H}-free Edge Deletion

For a set of graphs $\mathcal{H}$, the \textsc{$\mathcal{H}$-free Edge Deletion} problem asks to find whether there exist at most $k$ edges in the input graph whose deletion results in a graph without any induced copy of $H\in\mathcal{H}$. In \cite{cai1996fixed}, it is shown that the problem is fixed-parameter tractable if $\mathcal{H}$ is of finite cardinality. However, it is proved in \cite{cai2013incompressibility} that if $\mathcal{H}$ is a singleton set containing $H$, for a large class of $H$, there exists no polynomial kernel unless $coNP\subseteq NP/poly$. In this paper, we present a polynomial kernel for this problem for any fixed finite set $\mathcal{H}$ of connected graphs and when the input graphs are of bounded degree. We note that there are \textsc{$\mathcal{H}$-free Edge Deletion} problems which remain NP-complete even for the bounded degree input graphs, for example \textsc{Triangle-free Edge Deletion}\cite{brugmann2009generating} and \textsc{Custer Edge Deletion($P_3$-free Edge Deletion)}\cite{komusiewicz2011alternative}. When $\mathcal{H}$ contains $K_{1,s}$, we obtain a stronger result - a polynomial kernel for $K_t$-free input graphs (for any fixed $t> 2$). We note that for $s>9$, there is an incompressibility result for \textsc{$K_{1,s}$-free Edge Deletion} for general graphs \cite{cai2012polynomial}. Our result provides first polynomial kernels for \textsc{Claw-free Edge Deletion} and \textsc{Line Edge Deletion} for $K_t$-free input graphs which are NP-complete even for $K_4$-free graphs\cite{yannakakis1981edge} and were raised as open problems in \cite{cai2013incompressibility,open2013worker}.Comment: 12 pages. IPEC 2014 accepted pape

Deleting Edges to Restrict the Size of an Epidemic: A New Application for Treewidth

Motivated by applications in network epidemiology, we consider the problem of determining whether it is possible to delete at most k edges from a given input graph (of small treewidth) so that the maximum component size in the resulting graph is at most h. While this problem is NP-complete in general, we provide evidence that many of the real-world networks of interest are likely to have small treewidth, and we describe an algorithm which solves the problem in time O((wh)2wn) on an input graph having n vertices and whose treewidth is bounded by a fixed constant w

Graph Editing to a Given Neighbourhood Degree List is Fixed-Parameter Tractable

Graph editing problems have a long history and have been widely studied, with applications in biochemistry and complex network analysis. They generally ask whether an input graph can be modified by inserting and deleting vertices and edges to a graph with the desired property. We consider the problem \textsc{Graph-Edit-to-NDL} (GEN) where the goal is to modify to a graph with a given neighbourhood degree list (NDL). The NDL lists the degrees of the neighbours of vertices in a graph, and is a stronger invariant than the degree sequence, which lists the degrees of vertices. We show \textsc{Graph-Edit-to-NDL} is NP-complete and study its parameterized complexity. In parameterized complexity, a problem is said to be fixed-parameter tractable with respect to a parameter if it has a solution whose running time is a function that is polynomial in the input size but possibly superpolynomial in the parameter. Golovach and Mertzios [ICSSR, 2016] studied editing to a graph with a given degree sequence and showed the problem is fixed-parameter tractable when parameterized by $\Delta+\ell$, where $\Delta$ is the maximum degree of the input graph and $\ell$ is the number of edits. We prove \textsc{Graph-Edit-to-NDL} is fixed-parameter tractable when parameterized by $\Delta+\ell$. Furthermore, we consider a harder problem \textsc{Constrained-Graph-Edit-to-NDL} (CGEN) that imposes constraints on the NDLs of intermediate graphs produced in the sequence. We adapt our FPT algorithm for \textsc{Graph-Edit-to-NDL} to solve \textsc{Constrained-Graph-Edit-to-NDL}, which proves \textsc{Constrained-Graph-Edit-to-NDL} is also fixed-parameter tractable when parameterized by $\Delta+\ell$. Our results imply that, for graph properties that can be expressed as properties of NDLs, editing to a graph with such a property is fixed-parameter tractable when parameterized by $\Delta+\ell$. We show that this family of graph properties includes some well-known graph measures used in complex network analysis

Graph Editing to a Given Neighbourhood Degree List is Fixed-Parameter Tractable

Graph editing problems have a long history and have been widely studied, with applications in biochemistry and complex network analysis. They generally ask whether an input graph can be modified by inserting and deleting vertices and edges to a graph with the desired property. We consider the problem \textsc{Graph-Edit-to-NDL} (GEN) where the goal is to modify to a graph with a given neighbourhood degree list (NDL). The NDL lists the degrees of the neighbours of vertices in a graph, and is a stronger invariant than the degree sequence, which lists the degrees of vertices. We show \textsc{Graph-Edit-to-NDL} is NP-complete and study its parameterized complexity. In parameterized complexity, a problem is said to be fixed-parameter tractable with respect to a parameter if it has a solution whose running time is a function that is polynomial in the input size but possibly superpolynomial in the parameter. Golovach and Mertzios [ICSSR, 2016] studied editing to a graph with a given degree sequence and showed the problem is fixed-parameter tractable when parameterized by $\Delta+\ell$, where $\Delta$ is the maximum degree of the input graph and $\ell$ is the number of edits. We prove \textsc{Graph-Edit-to-NDL} is fixed-parameter tractable when parameterized by $\Delta+\ell$. Furthermore, we consider a harder problem \textsc{Constrained-Graph-Edit-to-NDL} (CGEN) that imposes constraints on the NDLs of intermediate graphs produced in the sequence. We adapt our FPT algorithm for \textsc{Graph-Edit-to-NDL} to solve \textsc{Constrained-Graph-Edit-to-NDL}, which proves \textsc{Constrained-Graph-Edit-to-NDL} is also fixed-parameter tractable when parameterized by $\Delta+\ell$. Our results imply that, for graph properties that can be expressed as properties of NDLs, editing to a graph with such a property is fixed-parameter tractable when parameterized by $\Delta+\ell$. We show that this family of graph properties includes some well-known graph measures used in complex network analysis

Deleting edges to restrict the size of an epidemic: a new application for treewidth

Motivated by applications in network epidemiology, we consider the problem of determining whether it is possible to delete at most k edges from a given input graph (of small treewidth) so that the resulting graph avoids a set FF of forbidden subgraphs; of particular interest is the problem of determining whether it is possible to delete at most k edges so that the resulting graph has no connected component of more than h vertices, as this bounds the worst-case size of an epidemic. While even this special case of the problem is NP-complete in general (even when h=3h=3 ), we provide evidence that many of the real-world networks of interest are likely to have small treewidth, and we describe an algorithm which solves the general problem in time 2O(|F|wr)n2O(|F|wr)n  on an input graph having n vertices and whose treewidth is bounded by a fixed constant w, if each of the subgraphs we wish to avoid has at most r vertices. For the special case in which we wish only to ensure that no component has more than h vertices, we improve on this to give an algorithm running in time O((wh)2wn)O((wh)2wn) , which we have implemented and tested on real datasets based on cattle movements

Some complexity results about threshold graphs

The problem of determining whether a graph G contains a threshold subgraph containing at least h edges is shown to be NP-complete if h is part of the input as the problems of minimum threshold completion, weighted 2-threshold partition and weighted 2-threshold covering. We also prove that the k-cyclic scheduling problem is NP-complete for all fixed k, a result used to show that deciding whether a threshold r-hypergraph contains a Hamiltonian cycle is NP-complet