CS 269S, Winter 2011: Theory Seminar
Bren Hall, Room 1427
7 Jan 2011:

Domination When the Stars Are Out

Matthias Mnich, International Computer Science Institute, Berkeley

We algorithmize the recent structural characterization for claw-free graphs by Chudnovsky and Seymour. Building on this result, we show that Dominating Set on claw-free graphs is (i) fixed-parameter tractable and (ii) even possesses a polynomial kernel. To complement these results, we establish that Dominating Set is not fixed-parameter tractable on the slightly larger class of graphs that exclude K1,4 as an induced subgraph. Our results provide a dichotomy for Dominating Set in K1,L-free graphs and show that the problem is fixed-parameter tractable if and only if L ≤ 3. Finally, we show that our algorithmization can also be used to show that the related Connected Dominating Set problem is fixed-parameter tractable on claw-free graphs.

(Joint work with Danny Hermelin, Erik Jan van Leeuwen and Gerhard Woeginger.)