Solving the undirected feedback vertex set problem by local search

Abstract

An undirected graph consists of a set of vertices and a set of undirected edges between vertices. Such a graph may contain an abundant number of cycles, in which case a feedback vertex set (FVS) is a set of vertices intersecting with each of these cycles. Constructing a FVS of cardinality approaching the global minimum value is an optimization problem in the nondeterministic polynomial-complete complexity class, and therefore it might be extremely difficult for some large graph instances. In this paper we develop a simulated annealing local search algorithm for the undirected FVS problem by adapting the heuristic procedure of Galinier et al. [P. Galinier, E. Lemamou, M.W. Bouzidi, J. Heuristics 19, 797 (2013)], which worked for the directed FVS problem. By defining an order for the vertices outside the FVS, we replace the global cycle constraints by a set of local vertex constraints on this order. Under these local constraints the cardinality of the focal FVS is then gradually reduced by the simulated annealing dynamical process. We test this heuristic algorithm on large instances of Erdös-Rényi random graph and regular random graph, and find that this algorithm is comparable in performance to the belief propagation-guided decimation algorithm.