On heroes in digraphs with forbidden induced forests

Abstract

We continue a line of research which studies which hereditary families of digraphs have bounded dichromatic number. For a class of digraphs $\mathcal{C}$, a hero in $\mathcal{C}$ is any digraph $H$ such that $H$-free digraphs in $\mathcal{C}$ have bounded dichromatic number. We show that if $F$ is an oriented star of degree at least five, the only heroes for the class of $F$-free digraphs are transitive tournaments. For oriented stars $F$ of degree exactly four, we show the only heroes in $F$-free digraphs are transitive tournaments, or possibly special joins of transitive tournaments. Aboulker et al. characterized the set of heroes of $\{H, K_{1} + \vec{P_{2}}\}$-free digraphs almost completely, and we show the same characterization for the class of $\{H, rK_{1} + \vec{P_{3}}\}$-free digraphs. Lastly, we show that if we forbid two "valid" orientations of brooms, then every transitive tournament is a hero for this class of digraphs.