BOUNDED SEARCH TREE ALGORITHMS FOR PARAMETRIZED COGRAPH DELETION: EFFICIENT BRANCHING RULES BY EXPLOITING STRUCTURES OF SPECIAL GRAPH CLASSES

Abstract

Many fixed-parameter tractable algorithms using a bounded search tree have been repeatedly improved, often by describing a larger number of branching rules involving an increasingly complex case analysis. We introduce a novel and general search strategy that branches on the forbidden subgraphs of a graph class relaxation. By using the class of P4-sparse graphs as the relaxed graph class, we obtain efficient bounded search tree algorithms for several parametrized deletion problems. We give the first non-trivial bounded search tree algorithms for the cograph edge-deletion problem and the trivially perfect edge-deletion problems. For the cograph vertex deletion problem, a refined analysis of the runtime of our simple bounded search algorithm gives a faster exponential factor than those algorithms designed with the help of complicated case distinctions and non-trivial running time analysis [R. Niedermeier and P. Rossmanith, An efficient fixed-parameter algorithm for 3-hitting set, J. Discrete Algorithms1(1) (2003) 89–102] and computer-aided branching rules [J. Gramm, J. Guo, F. Hüffner and R. Niedermeier, Automated generation of search tree algorithms for hard graph modification problems, Algorithmica39(4) (2004) 321–347].