Kernels for (connected) Dominating Set on graphs with Excluded Topological subgraphs

Abstract: We give the first linear kernels for the (Connected) Dominating Set problems on H-topological minor free graphs. We prove the existence of polynomial time algorithms that, for a given H-topological-minor-free graph G and a positive integer k, output an H-topological-minor-free graph G' on O(k) vertices such that G has a (connected) dominating set of size k iff G' has one. Our results extend the known classes of graphs on which the Dominating Set and Connected Dominating Set problems admit linear kernels. Prior to our work, it was known that these problems admit linear kernels on graphs excluding a fixed apex graph H as a minor. Moreover, for Dominating Set, a kernel of size kc(H), where c(H) is a constant depending on the size of H, follows from a more general result on the kernelization of Dominating Set on graphs of bounded degeneracy. Alon and Gutner explicitly asked whether one can obtain a linear kernel for Dominating Set on H-minor-free graphs. We answer this question in the affirmative and in fact prove a more general result. For Connected Dominating Set no polynomial kernel even on H-minor-free graphs was known prior to our work. On the negative side, it is known that Connected Dominating Set on 2-degenerated graphs does not admit a polynomial kernel unless coNP $\subseteq$ NP/poly. Our kernelization algorithm is based on a non-trivial combination of the following ingredients The structural theorem of Grohe and Marx [STOC 2012] for graphs excluding a fixed graph H as a topological minor; A novel notion of protrusions, different than the one defined in [FOCS 2009]; Our results are based on a generic reduction rule that produces an equivalent instance (in case the input graph is H-minor-free) of the problem, with treewidth $O(\sqrt{k})$. The application of this rule in a divide-and-conquer fashion, together with the new notion of protrusions, gives us the linear kernels.