Deletion to Induced Matching

Abstract

In the DELETION TO INDUCED MATCHING problem, we are given a graph $G$ on $n$ vertices, $m$ edges and a non-negative integer $k$ and asks whether there exists a set of vertices $S\subseteq V(G)$ such that $|S|\le k$ and the size of any connected component in $G-S$ is exactly 2. In this paper, we provide a fixed-parameter tractable (FPT) algorithm of running time $O^{\ast }(1.748^k)$ for the DELETION TO INDUCED MATCHING problem using branch-and-reduce strategy and path decomposition. We also extend our work to the exact-exponential version of the problem.

11 pages