The Erdos-Posa Property for Directed Graphs

Abstract

A classical result by Erdos and Posa states that there is a function $f: {\mathbb N} \rightarrow {\mathbb N}$ such that for every $k$, every graph $G$ contains $k$ pairwise vertex disjoint cycles or a set $T$ of at most $f(k)$ vertices such that $G-T$ is acyclic. The generalisation of this result to directed graphs is known as Younger's conjecture and was proved by Reed, Robertson, Seymour and Thomas in 1996. This so-called Erdos-Posa-property can naturally be generalised to arbitrary graphs and digraphs. Robertson and Seymour proved that a graph $H$ has the Erdos-Posa-property if, and only if, $H$ is planar. In this paper we study the corresponding problem for digraphs. We obtain a complete characterisation of the class of strongly connected digraphs which have the Erdos-Posa-property (both for topological and butterfly minors). We also generalise this result to classes of digraphs which are not strongly connected. In particular, we study the class of vertex-cyclic digraphs (digraphs without trivial strong components). For this natural class of digraphs we obtain a nearly complete characterisation of the digraphs within this class with the Erdos-Posa-property. In particular we give positive and algorithmic examples of digraphs with the Erdos-Posa-property by using directed tree decompositions in a novel way.