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arXiv · 2005.01460

Reducing graph transversals via edge contractions

Paloma T. Lima·Vinicius F. dos Santos·Ignasi Sau·Uéverton S. Souza
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Abstract

For a graph invariant $π$, the Contraction($π$) problem consists in, given a graph $G$ and two positive integers $k,d$, deciding whether one can contract at most $k$ edges of $G$ to obtain a graph in which $π$ has dropped by at least $d$. Galby et al. [ISAAC 2019, MFCS 2019] recently studied the case where $π$ is the size of a minimum dominating set. We focus on graph invariants defined as the minimum size of a vertex set that hits all the occurrences of graphs in a collection ${\cal H}$ according to a fixed containment relation. We prove co-NP-hardness results under some assumptions on the graphs in ${\cal H}$, which in particular imply that Contraction($π$) is co-NP-hard even for fixed $k=d=1$ when $π$ is the size of a minimum feedback vertex set or an odd cycle transversal. In sharp contrast, we show that when $π$ is the size of a minimum vertex cover, the problem is in XP parameterized by $d$.

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Paloma T. Lima, Vinicius F. dos Santos, Ignasi Sau, Uéverton S. Souza. 2021-03-22. Reducing graph transversals via edge contractions. https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.01460

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