English

On the Parameterized Complexity of Computing $st$-Orientations with Few Transitive Edges

Data Structures and Algorithms 2023-07-11 v2 Computational Geometry

Abstract

Orienting the edges of an undirected graph such that the resulting digraph satisfies some given constraints is a classical problem in graph theory, with multiple algorithmic applications. In particular, an stst-orientation orients each edge of the input graph such that the resulting digraph is acyclic, and it contains a single source ss and a single sink tt. Computing an stst-orientation of a graph can be done efficiently, and it finds notable applications in graph algorithms and in particular in graph drawing. On the other hand, finding an stst-orientation with at most kk transitive edges is more challenging and it was recently proven to be NP-hard already when k=0k=0. We strengthen this result by showing that the problem remains NP-hard even for graphs of bounded diameter, and for graphs of bounded vertex degree. These computational lower bounds naturally raise the question about which structural parameters can lead to tractable parameterizations of the problem. Our main result is a fixed-parameter tractable algorithm parameterized by treewidth.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2306.03196,
  title  = {On the Parameterized Complexity of Computing $st$-Orientations with Few Transitive Edges},
  author = {Carla Binucci and Giuseppe Liotta and Fabrizio Montecchiani and Giacomo Ortali and Tommaso Piselli},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2306.03196},
  year   = {2023}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-28T10:57:08.862Z