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The \textsl{branchwidth} of a graph has been introduced by Roberson and Seymour as a measure of the tree-decomposability of a graph, alternative to treewidth. Branchwidth is polynomially computable on planar graphs by the celebrated ``Ratcatcher''-algorithm of Seymour and Thomas. We investigate an extension of this algorithm to minor-closed graph classes, further than planar graphs as follows: Let $H_{0}$ be a graph embeddedable in the projective plane and $H_{1}$ be a graph embeddedable in the torus. We prove that every $\{H_{0},H_{1}\}$-minor free graph $G$ contains a subgraph $G'$ where the difference between the branchwidth of $G$ and the branchwidth of $G'$ is bounded by some constant, depending only on $H_{0}$ and $H_{1}$. Moreover, the graph $G'$ admits a tree decomposition where all torsos are planar. This decomposition can be used for deriving an EPTAS for branchwidth: For $\{H_{0},H_{1}\}$-minor free graphs, there is a function $f\colon\mathbb{N}\to\mathbb{N}$ and a $(1+\epsilon)$-approximation algorithm for branchwidth, running in time $\mathcal{O}(n^3+f(\frac{1}{\epsilon})\cdot n),$ for every $\epsilon>0$., Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2010.12397 by other authors

Given an annotated graph class $\mathcal{C}$, the $\mathcal{C}$-blind-treewidth of a graph $G$ is the smallest integer $k$ such that $G$ has a tree-decomposition where, for every $t\in V(T)$, if the annotated graph $(G,\beta(t))$ does not belong to $\mathcal{C}$, then $\beta(t)$ has size at most $k$. In this paper we focus on the annotated class $\mathcal{B}$ of ``globally bipartite'' subgraphs and the class~$\mathcal{P}$ of ``globally planar'' subgraphs together with the \oddminor\ relation. For each of the two parameters, $\mathcal{B}$-blind-treewidth and ${(\mathcal{B}\cup\mathcal{P})}$-blind-treewidth, we prove an analogue of the celebrated Grid Theorem under the \oddminor\ relation. As a consequence we obtain FPT-approximation algorithms for both parameters. We then provide FPT-algorithms for \textsc{Maximum Independent Set} on graphs of bounded $\mathcal{B}$-blind-treewidth and \textsc{Maximum Cut} on graphs of bounded ${(\mathcal{B}\cup\mathcal{P})}$-blind-treewidth.

\noindent By a seminal result of Valiant, computing the permanent of $(0,1)$-matrices is, in general, $\#\mathsf{P}$-hard. In 1913 P\'olya asked for which $(0,1)$-matrices $A$ it is possible to change some signs such that the permanent of $A$ equals the determinant of the resulting matrix. In 1975, Little showed these matrices to be exactly the biadjacency matrices of bipartite graphs excluding $K_{3,3}$ as a \{matching minor}. This was turned into a polynomial time algorithm by McCuaig, Robertson, Seymour, and Thomas in 1999. However, the relation between the exclusion of some matching minor in a bipartite graph and the tractability of the permanent extends beyond $K_{3,3}.$ Recently it was shown that the exclusion of any planar bipartite graph as a matching minor yields a class of bipartite graphs on which the {permanent} of the corresponding $(0,1)$-matrices can be computed efficiently. In this paper we unify the two results above into a single, more general result in the style of the celebrated structure theorem for single-crossing-minor-free graphs. We identify a class of bipartite graphs strictly generalising planar bipartite graphs and $K_{3,3}$ which includes infinitely many non-Pfaffian graphs. The exclusion of any member of this class as a matching minor yields a structure that allows for the efficient evaluation of the permanent. Moreover, we show that the evaluation of the permanent remains $\#\mathsf{P}$-hard on bipartite graphs which exclude $K_{5,5}$ as a matching minor. This establishes a first computational lower bound for the problem of counting perfect matchings on matching minor closed classes., Comment: Accepted in SODA 2023

We introduce a new kernelization tool, called rainbow matching technique}, that is appropriate for the design of polynomial kernels for packing problems and their hitting counterparts. Our technique capitalizes on the powerful combinatorial results of [Graf, Harris, Haxell, SODA 2021]. We apply the rainbow matching technique on four (di)graph packing or hitting problems, namely the Triangle-Packing in Tournament problem (TPT), where we ask for a packing of $k$ directed triangles in a tournament, Directed Feedback Vertex Set in Tournament problem (FVST), where we ask for a (hitting) set of at most $k$ vertices which intersects all triangles of a tournament, the Induced 2-Path-Packing (IPP) where we ask for a packing of $k$ induced paths of length two in a graph and Induced 2-Path Hitting Set problem (IPHS), where we ask for a (hitting) set of at most $k$ vertices which intersects all induced paths of length two in a graph. The existence of a sub-quadratic kernels for these problems was proven for the first time in [Fomin, Le, Lokshtanov, Saurabh, Thomass\'e, Zehavi. ACM Trans. Algorithms, 2019], where they gave a kernel of $O(k^{3/2})$ vertices for the two first problems and $O(k^{5/3})$ vertices for the two last. In the same paper it was questioned whether these bounds can be (optimally) improved to linear ones. Motivated by this question, we apply the rainbow matching technique and prove that TPT and FVST admit (almost linear) kernels of $k^{1+\frac{O(1)}{\sqrt{\log{k}}}}$ vertices and that IPP and IPHS admit kernels of $O(k)$ vertices., Comment: Accepted to SODA 2023

A major step in the graph minors theory of Robertson and Seymour is the transition from the Grid Theorem which, in some sense uniquely, describes areas of large treewidth within a graph, to a notion of local flatness of these areas in form of the existence of a large flat wall within any huge grid of an H-minor free graph. In this paper, we prove a matching theoretic analogue of the Flat Wall Theorem for bipartite graphs excluding a fixed matching minor. Our result builds on a a tight relationship between structural digraph theory and matching theory and allows us to deduce a Flat Wall Theorem for digraphs which substantially differs from a previously established directed variant of this theorem.

Matching minors are a specialisation of minors fit for the study of graph with perfect matchings. The notion of matching minors has been used to give a structural description of bipartite graphs on which the number of perfect matchings can becomputed efficiently, based on a result of Little, by McCuaig et al. in 1999.In this paper we generalise basic ideas from the graph minor series by Robertson and Seymour to the setting of bipartite graphs with perfect matchings. We introducea version of Erdos-Posa property for matching minors and find a direct link between this property and planarity. From this, it follows that a class of bipartite graphs withperfect matchings has bounded perfect matching width if and only if it excludes aplanar matching minor. We also present algorithms for bipartite graphs of bounded perfect matching width for a matching version of the disjoint paths problem, matching minor containment, and for counting the number of perfect matchings. From our structural results, we obtain that recognising whether a bipartite graphGcontains afixed planar graphHas a matching minor, and that counting the number of perfect matchings of a bipartite graph that excludes a fixed planar graph as a matching minor are both polynomial time solvable.

A bipartite graph B is called a brace if it is connected and every matching of size at most two in B is contained in some perfect matching of B and a cycle C in B is called conformal if B-V(C) has a perfect matching. We show that there do not exist two disjoint alternating paths that form a cross over a conformal cycle C in a brace B if and only if one can reduce B, by an application of a matching theoretic analogue of small clique sums, to a planar brace H in which C bounds a face. We then utilise this result and provide a polynomial time algorithm which solves the 2-linkage problem for alternating paths in bipartite graphs with perfect matchings.

Many well-known NP-hard algorithmic problems on directed graphs resist efficient parametrisations with most known width measures for directed graphs, such as directed treewidth, DAG-width, Kelly-width and many others. While these focus on measuring how close a digraph is to an oriented tree resp. a directed acyclic graph, in this paper, we investigate directed modular width as a parameter, which is closer to the concept of clique-width. We investigate applications of modular decompositions of directed graphs to a wide range of algorithmic problems and derive FPT-algorithms for several well-known digraph-specific NP-hard problems, namely minimum (weight) directed feedback vertex set, minimum (weight) directed dominating set, digraph colouring, directed Hamiltonian path/cycle, partitioning into paths, (capacitated) vertex-disjoint directed paths, and the directed subgraph homeomorphism problem. The latter yields a polynomial-time algorithm for detecting topological minors in digraphs of bounded directed modular width. Finally we illustrate that also other structural digraph parameters, such as the directed pathwidth and the cycle-rank can be computed efficiently using directed modular width as a parameter., 69 pages, 3 figures

A graph G is called matching covered if it is connected and every edge is contained in a perfect matching. Perfect matching width is a width parameter for matching covered graphs based on a branch decomposition that can be considered a generalisation of directed treewidth. We show that the perfect matching width of every bipartite matching covered graph is within a factor of 2 of the perfect matching width of its braces. Moreover, we give characterisations for braces of perfect matching width in terms of edge maximal graphs similar to k-trees for undirected treewidth and elimination orderings. The latter allows us to identify braces of perfect matching width 2 in polynomial time and provides an algorithm to construct an optimal decomposition.

We characterise digraphs of directed treewidth one in terms of forbidden butterfly minors. Moreover, we show that there is a linear relation between the hypertree-width of the dual of the cycle hypergraph of D, i. e. the hypergraph with vertices V (D) where every hyperedge corresponds to a directed cycle in D, and the directed treewidth of D. Based on this we show that a digraph has directed treewidth one if and only if its cycle hypergraph is a hypertree.

This paper studies the fundamental problem of how to reroute $k$ unsplittable flows of a certain demand in a capacitated network from their current paths to their respective new paths, in a congestion-free manner and fast. This scheduling problem has applications in traffic engineering in communication networks and has recently received much attention in software-defined networks, in which updates are distributed over an asynchronous network by a software controller. However, existing algorithms for this problem either have a super-polynomial runtime or only compute feasible schedules, which do not provide any guarantees on the length of the rerouting schedule. This paper presents the first polynomial-time algorithm for computing shortest update schedules to reroute flows in a congestion-free manner. We contribute an almost tight characterization of the polynomial-time tractability of the problem: We present the first polynomial-time solution for this problem for two flows, but also show that even the question whether a feasible update schedule exists, is already NP-hard for six flows. In fact, the presented algorithm runs in linear time and is hence not only optimal in terms of scheduling but also asymptotically optimal in terms of runtime., arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1611.09296