License: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license (CC BY 3.0)
When quoting this document, please refer to the following
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2020.16
URN: urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-124238
URL: http://dagstuhl.sunsite.rwth-aachen.de/volltexte/2020/12423/
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Bougeret, Marin ; Jansen, Bart M. P. ; Sau, Ignasi

Bridge-Depth Characterizes Which Structural Parameterizations of Vertex Cover Admit a Polynomial Kernel

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Abstract

We study the kernelization complexity of structural parameterizations of the Vertex Cover problem. Here, the goal is to find a polynomial-time preprocessing algorithm that can reduce any instance (G,k) of the Vertex Cover problem to an equivalent one, whose size is polynomial in the size of a pre-determined complexity parameter of G. A long line of previous research deals with parameterizations based on the number of vertex deletions needed to reduce G to a member of a simple graph class ℱ, such as forests, graphs of bounded tree-depth, and graphs of maximum degree two. We set out to find the most general graph classes ℱ for which Vertex Cover parameterized by the vertex-deletion distance of the input graph to ℱ, admits a polynomial kernelization. We give a complete characterization of the minor-closed graph families ℱ for which such a kernelization exists. We introduce a new graph parameter called bridge-depth, and prove that a polynomial kernelization exists if and only if ℱ has bounded bridge-depth. The proof is based on an interesting connection between bridge-depth and the size of minimal blocking sets in graphs, which are vertex sets whose removal decreases the independence number.

BibTeX - Entry

@InProceedings{bougeret_et_al:LIPIcs:2020:12423,
  author =	{Marin Bougeret and Bart M. P. Jansen and Ignasi Sau},
  title =	{{Bridge-Depth Characterizes Which Structural Parameterizations of Vertex Cover Admit a Polynomial Kernel}},
  booktitle =	{47th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2020)},
  pages =	{16:1--16:19},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-138-2},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2020},
  volume =	{168},
  editor =	{Artur Czumaj and Anuj Dawar and Emanuela Merelli},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl--Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/volltexte/2020/12423},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-124238},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2020.16},
  annote =	{Keywords: vertex cover, parameterized complexity, polynomial kernel, structural parameterization, bridge-depth}
}

Keywords: vertex cover, parameterized complexity, polynomial kernel, structural parameterization, bridge-depth
Collection: 47th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2020)
Issue Date: 2020
Date of publication: 29.06.2020

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