Obstructions for acyclic local tournament orientation completions

Abstract: The orientation completion problem for a fixed class of oriented graphs asks whether a given partially oriented graph can be completed to an oriented graph in the class. Orientation completion problems have been studied recently for several classes of oriented graphs, yielding both polynomial time solutions and NP-completeness results. Local tournaments are a well-structured class of oriented graphs that generalize tournaments and their underlying graphs are intimately related to proper circular-arc graphs. Proper interval graphs are precisely those which can be oriented as acyclic local tournaments. It has been proved that the orientation completion problems for local tournaments and acyclic local tournaments are both polynomial time solvable. In this paper we identify the obstructions for acyclic local tournament orientation completions. These are in a sense minimal partially oriented graphs that cannot be completed to acyclic local tournaments. Our description of the obstructions imply that they can be recognized in polynomial time. In a companion paper we will determine all obstructions for local tournament orientation completions.