KAIST Discrete Math Seminar

A chordless cycle in a graph G is an induced subgraph of G which is a cycle of length at least four. We prove that the Erdős-Pósa property holds for chordless cycles, which resolves the major open question concerning the Erdős-Pósa property. Our proof for chordless cycles is constructive: in polynomial time, one can find either k+1 vertex-disjoint chordless cycles, or ck² log k vertices hitting every chordless cycle for some constant c. It immediately implies an approximation algorithm of factor O(OPT log OPT) for Chordal Vertex Deletion. We complement our main result by showing that chordless cycles of length at least ℓ for any fixed ℓ≥ 5 do not have the Erdős-Pósa property.