On kernels by rainbow paths in arc-coloured digraphs

Abstract

In 2018, Bai, Fujita and Zhang (\emph{Discrete Math.} 2018, 341(6): 1523-1533) introduced the concept of a kernel by rainbow paths (for short, RP-kernel) of an arc-coloured digraph $D$, which is a subset $S$ of vertices of $D$ such that ($a$) there exists no rainbow path for any pair of distinct vertices of $S$, and ($b$) every vertex outside $S$ can reach $S$ by a rainbow path in $D$. They showed that it is NP-hard to recognize wether an arc-coloured digraph has a RP-kernel and it is NP-complete to decided wether an arc-coloured tournament has a RP-kernel. In this paper, we give the sufficient conditions for the existence of a RP-kernel in arc-coloured unicyclic digraphs, semicomplete digraphs, quasi-transitive digraphs and bipartite tournaments, and prove that these arc-coloured digraphs have RP-kernels if certain "short" cycles and certain "small" induced subdigraphs are rainbow.