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Algorithmic Applications of Tree-Cut Width

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Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science 2015 (MFCS 2015)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 9235))

Abstract

The recently introduced graph parameter tree-cut width plays a similar role with respect to immersions as the graph parameter treewidth plays with respect to minors. In this paper we provide the first algorithmic applications of tree-cut width to hard combinatorial problems. Tree-cut width is known to be lower-bounded by a function of treewidth, but it can be much larger and hence has the potential to facilitate the efficient solution of problems which are not known to be fixed-parameter tractable (FPT) when parameterized by treewidth. We introduce the notion of nice tree-cut decompositions and provide FPT algorithms for the showcase problems Capacitated Vertex Cover, Capacitated Dominating Set and Imbalance parameterized by the tree-cut width of an input graph G. On the other hand, we show that List Coloring, Precoloring Extension and Boolean CSP (the latter parameterized by the tree-cut width of the incidence graph) are W[1]-hard and hence unlikely to be fixed-parameter tractable when parameterized by tree-cut width.

R. Ganian and S. Szeider — Research supported by the FWF Austrian Science Fund (X-TRACT, P26696).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    A graph H is an immersion of a graph G if H can be obtained from G by applications of vertex deletion, edge deletion, and edge lifting, i.e., replacing two incident edges by a single edge which joins the two vertices not shared by the two edges.

  2. 2.

    We call them “nice” as they serve a similar purpose as the nice tree decompositions [13], although the definitions are completely unrelated.

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Ganian, R., Kim, E.J., Szeider, S. (2015). Algorithmic Applications of Tree-Cut Width. In: Italiano, G., Pighizzini, G., Sannella, D. (eds) Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science 2015. MFCS 2015. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9235. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-48054-0_29

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-48054-0_29

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