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In the Block Graph Deletion problem, we are given a graph G on n vertices and a positive integer k, and the objective is to check whether it is possible to delete at most k vertices from G to make it a block graph, i.e., a graph in which each block is a clique. In this paper, we obtain a kernel with O(k^{6}) vertices for the Block Graph Deletion problem. This is a first step to investigate polynomial kernels for deletion problems into non-trivial classes of graphs of bounded rank-width, but unbounded tree-width. Our result also implies that Chordal Vertex Deletion admits a polynomial-size kernel on diamond-free graphs. For the kernelization and its analysis, we introduce the notion of 'complete degree' of a vertex. We believe that the underlying idea can be potentially applied to other problems. We also prove that the Block Graph Deletion problem can be solved in time 10^{k} * n^{O(1)}.
@InProceedings{kim_et_al:LIPIcs.IPEC.2015.270,
author = {Kim, Eun Jung and Kwon, O-joung},
title = {{A Polynomial Kernel for Block Graph Deletion}},
booktitle = {10th International Symposium on Parameterized and Exact Computation (IPEC 2015)},
pages = {270--281},
series = {Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
ISBN = {978-3-939897-92-7},
ISSN = {1868-8969},
year = {2015},
volume = {43},
editor = {Husfeldt, Thore and Kanj, Iyad},
publisher = {Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
address = {Dagstuhl, Germany},
URL = {https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.IPEC.2015.270},
URN = {urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-55893},
doi = {10.4230/LIPIcs.IPEC.2015.270},
annote = {Keywords: block graph, polynomial kernel, single-exponential FPT algorithm}
}