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Close relatives of Feedback Vertex Set without single-exponential algorithms parameterized by treewidth

Data Structures and Algorithms 2020-07-29 v1 Computational Complexity

Abstract

The Cut & Count technique and the rank-based approach have lead to single-exponential FPT algorithms parameterized by treewidth, that is, running in time 2O(tw)nO(1)2^{O(tw)}n^{O(1)}, for Feedback Vertex Set and connected versions of the classical graph problems (such as Vertex Cover and Dominating Set). We show that Subset Feedback Vertex Set, Subset Odd Cycle Transversal, Restricted Edge-Subset Feedback Edge Set, Node Multiway Cut, and Multiway Cut are unlikely to have such running times. More precisely, we match algorithms running in time 2O(twlogtw)nO(1)2^{O(tw \log tw)}n^{O(1)} with tight lower bounds under the Exponential-Time Hypothesis (ETH), ruling out 2o(twlogtw)nO(1)2^{o(tw \log tw)}n^{O(1)}, where nn is the number of vertices and twtw is the treewidth of the input graph. Our algorithms extend to the weighted case, while our lower bounds also hold for the larger parameter pathwidth and do not require weights. We also show that, in contrast to Odd Cycle Transversal, there is no 2o(twlogtw)nO(1)2^{o(tw \log tw)}n^{O(1)}-time algorithm for Even Cycle Transversal under the ETH.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2007.14179,
  title  = {Close relatives of Feedback Vertex Set without single-exponential algorithms parameterized by treewidth},
  author = {Benjamin Bergougnoux and Édouard Bonnet and Nick Brettell and O-joung Kwon},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2007.14179},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

25 pages, 5 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-23T17:27:48.429Z