Maximum Weight Independent Sets in Odd-Hole-Free Graphs Without Dart or Without Bull

Abstract: The Maximum Weight Independent Set (MWIS) Problem on graphs with vertex weights asks for a set of pairwise nonadjacent vertices of maximum total weight. Being one of the most investigated and most important problems on graphs, it is well known to be NP-complete and hard to approximate. The complexity of MWIS is open for hole-free graphs (i.e., graphs without induced subgraphs isomorphic to a chordless cycle of length at least five). By applying clique separator decomposition as well as modular decomposition, we obtain polynomial time solutions of MWIS for odd-hole- and dart-free graphs as well as for odd-hole- and bull-free graphs (dart and bull have five vertices, say $a,b,c,d,e$, and dart has edges $ab,ac,ad,bd,cd,de$, while bull has edges $ab,bc,cd,be,ce$). If the graphs are hole-free instead of odd-hole-free then stronger structural results and better time bounds are obtained.