KAIST Discrete Math Seminar

A t-treewidth-modulator of a graph G is a set X⊆V(G) such that the treewidth of G-X is at most some constant t-1. In this paper, we present a novel algorithm to compute a decomposition scheme for graphs G that come equipped with a t-treewidth-modulator. This decomposition, called a protrusion decomposition, is the cornerstone in obtaining the following two main results.
We first show that any parameterized graph problem (with parameter k) that has finite integer index and is treewidth-bounding admits a linear kernel on H-topological-minor-free graphs, where H is some arbitrary but fixed graph. A parameterized graph problem is called treewidth-bounding if all positive instances have a t-treewidth-modulator of size O(k), for some constant t. This result partially extends previous meta-theorems on the existence of linear kernels on graphs of bounded genus [Bodlaender et al., FOCS 2009] and H-minor-free graphs [Fomin et al., SODA 2010].
Our second application concerns the Planar-F-Deletion problem. Let F be a fixed finite family of graphs containing at least one planar graph. Given an n-vertex graph G and a non-negative integer k, Planar-F-Deletion asks whether G has a set X⊆ V(G) such that |X|≤k and G-X is H-minor-free for every H∈F. Very recently, an algorithm for Planar-F-Deletion with running time 2^O(k) n log² n (such an algorithm is called single-exponential) has been presented in [Fomin et al., FOCS 2012] under the condition that every graph in F is connected. Using our algorithm to construct protrusion decompositions as a building block, we get rid of this connectivity constraint and present an algorithm for the general Planar-F-Deletion problem running in time 2^O(k)n².
This is a joint work with Alexander Langer, Christophe Paul, Felix Reidl, Peter Rossmanith, Ignasi Sau, and Somnath Sikdar.