A Polynomial Kernel for Deletion to Ptolemaic Graphs

For a family of graphs F, given a graph G and an integer k, the F-Deletion problem asks whether we can delete at most k vertices from G to obtain a graph in the family F. The F-Deletion problems for all non-trivial families F that satisfy the hereditary property on induced subgraphs are known to be NP-hard by a result of Yannakakis (STOC\u2778). Ptolemaic graphs are the graphs that satisfy the Ptolemy inequality, and they are the intersection of chordal graphs and distance-hereditary graphs. Equivalently, they form the set of graphs that do not contain any chordless cycles or a gem as an induced subgraph. (A gem is the graph on 5 vertices, where four vertices form an induced path, and the fifth vertex is adjacent to all the vertices of this induced path.) The Ptolemaic Deletion problem is the F-Deletion problem, where F is the family of Ptolemaic graphs. In this paper we study Ptolemaic Deletion from the viewpoint of Kernelization Complexity, and obtain a kernel with ?(k?) vertices for the problem