A Polynomial Kernel for Funnel Arc Deletion Set

Abstract

In Directed Feeback Arc Set (DFAS) we search for a set of at most $k$ arcs which intersect every cycle in the input digraph. It is a well-known open problem in parameterized complexity to decide if DFAS admits a kernel of polynomial size. We consider $\mathcal{C}$-Arc Deletion Set ($\mathcal{C}$-ADS), a variant of DFAS where we want to remove at most $k$ arcs from the input digraph in order to turn it into a digraph of a class $\mathcal{C}$. In this work, we choose $\mathcal{C}$ to be the class of funnels. Funnel-Arc Deletion Set is NP-hard even if the input is a DAG, but is fixed-parameter tractable with respect to $k$. So far no polynomial kernels for this problem were known. Our main result is a kernel for Funnel-Arc Deletion Set with $\mathcal{O}(k^6)$ many vertices and $\mathcal{O}(k^7)$ many arcs, computable in $\mathcal{O}(nm)$ time, where $n$ is the number of vertices and $m$ the number of arcs in the input digraph.