Finding k-secluded trees faster

Abstract

We revisit the k-Secluded Tree problem. Given a vertex-weighted undirected graph G, its objective is to find a maximum-weight induced subtree T whose open neighborhood has size at most k. We present a fixed-parameter tractable algorithm that solves the problem in time 2O(klog⁡k)⋅nO(1), improving on a double-exponential running time from earlier work by Golovach, Heggernes, Lima, and Montealegre. Starting from a single vertex, our algorithm grows a k-secluded tree by branching on vertices in the open neighborhood of the current tree T. To bound the branching depth, we prove a structural result that can be used to identify a vertex that belongs to the neighborhood of any k-secluded supertree T′⊇T once the open neighborhood of T becomes sufficiently large. We extend the algorithm to enumerate compact descriptions of all maximum-weight k-secluded trees, which allows us to count them as well.