Simultaneous Feedback Vertex Set: A Parameterized Perspective

Abstract

For a family of graphs F, a graph G, and a positive integer k, the F-DELETION problem asks whether we can delete at most k vertices from G to obtain a graph in F. F-DELETION generalizes many classical graph problems such as Vertex Cover, Feedback Vertex Set, and Odd Cycle Transversal. A graph G = (V, cup_{i=1}^{alpha} E_{i}), where the edge set of G is partitioned into alpha color classes, is called an alpha-edge-colored graph. A natural extension of the F-DELETION problem to edge-colored graphs is the alpha-SIMULTANEOUS F-DELETION problem. In the latter problem, we are given an alpha-edge-colored graph G and the goal is to find a set S of at most k vertices such that each graph G_i\S, where G_i = (V, E_i) and 1 <= i <= alpha, is in F. In this work, we study alpha-SIMULTANEOUS F-DELETION for F being the family of forests. In other words, we focus on the alpha-SIMULTANEOUS FEEDBACK VERTEX SET (alpha-SIMFVS) problem. Algorithmically, we show that, like its classical counterpart, alpha-SIMFVS parameterized by k is fixed-parameter tractable (FPT) and admits a polynomial kernel, for any fixed constant alpha. In particular, we give an algorithm running in 2^{O(alpha * k)} * n^{O(1)} time and a kernel with O(alpha * k^{3(alpha + 1)}) vertices. The running time of our algorithm implies that alpha-SIMFVS is FPT even when alpha in o(log(n)). We complement this positive result by showing that for alpha in O(log(n)), where n is the number of vertices in the input graph, alpha-SIMFVS becomes W[1]-hard. Our positive results answer one of the open problems posed by Cai and Ye (MFCS 2014).