The NP-complete problems Colouring and k-Colouring (k ≥ 3) are well studied on H-free graphs, i.e., graphs that do not contain some fixed graph H as an induced subgraph. We research to what extent the known polynomial-time algorithms for H-free graphs can be generalized if we only know some of the edges of the input graph. We do this by considering the classical probe graph model introduced in the early nineties. For a graph H, a partitioned probe H-free graph (G,P,N) consists of a graph G = (V,E), together with a set P ⊆ V of probes and an independent set N = V ⧵ P of non-probes, such that G+F is H-free for some edge set F ⊆ binom(N,2). We show the following: - We fully classify Colouring on partitioned probe H-free graphs and show that the obtained complexity dichotomy differs from the known dichotomy of Colouring for H-free graphs. - We fully classify 3-Colouring on partitioned probe P_t-free graphs: we prove polynomial-time solvability for t ≤ 5 and NP-completeness for t ≥ 6. In contrast, 3-Colouring on P_t-free graphs is known to be polynomial-time solvable for t ≤ 7 and quasi-polynomial-time solvable for t ≥ 8. Our main result is our polynomial-time algorithm for 3-Colouring on partitioned P₅-free graphs. For this result, and also for all our other polynomial-time results, we do not need to know the edge set F; we only need to know its existence. Moreover, the class of probe P₅-free graphs includes not only paths of arbitrary length but even all bipartite graphs and is much richer than the class of P₅-free graphs. The latter is also evidenced by the fact that there exist graph problems, such as Matching Cut, that are known to be polynomial-time solvable for P₅-free graphs but NP-complete for partitioned probe P₅-free graphs. In particular, unlike the class of 3-colourable P₅-free graphs, the class of 3-colourable probe P₅-free graphs has unbounded mim-width. Hence, our polynomial-time result for 3-Colouring for probe P₅-free graphs suggests that there may be another, deeper overarching reason why 3-Colouring is polynomial-time solvable for P₅-free graphs.

One way to define the Matching Cut problem is: Given a graph G, is there an edge-cut M of G such that M is an independent set in the line graph of G? We propose the more general Conflict-Free Cut problem: Together with the graph G, we are given a so-called conflict graph Gˆ on the edges of G, and we ask for an edge-cutset M of G that is independent in Gˆ. Since conflict-free settings are popular generalizations of classical optimization problems and Conflict-Free Cut was not considered in the literature so far, we start the study of the problem. We show that the problem is NP-complete even when the maximum degree of G is 5 and Gˆ is 1-regular. The same reduction implies an exponential lower bound on the solvability based on the Exponential Time Hypothesis. We also give parameterized complexity results: We show that the problem is fixed-parameter tractable with the vertex cover number of G as a parameter, and we show W[1]-hardness even when G has a feedback vertex set of size one, and the clique cover number of Gˆ is the parameter. Since the clique cover number of Gˆ is an upper bound on the independence number of Gˆ and thus the solution size, this implies W[1]-hardness when parameterized by the cut size. We list polynomial-time solvable cases and interesting open problems. At last, we draw a connection to a symmetric variant of SAT.

The Independent Cutset problem asks whether there is a set of vertices in a given graph that is both independent and a cutset. This problem is -complete even when the input graph is planar and has maximum degree five. We first present a O ⁎ ( 1.4423 n ) -time algorithm to compute a minimum independent cutset (if any). Since the property of having an independent cutset is MSO 1 -expressible, our main results are concerned with structural parameterizations for the problem considering parameters incomparable with clique-width. We present -time algorithms under the following parameters: the dual of the maximum degree, the dual of the solution size, the size of a dominating set (where a dominating set is given as an additional input), the size of an odd cycle transversal, the distance to chordal graphs, and the distance to P 5 -free graphs. We close by introducing the notion of α -domination, which generalizes key ideas of this article.

We consider a natural generalization of Vertex Cover : the Subset Vertex Cover problem, which is to decide for a graph G = ( V , E ) , a subset T ⊆ V and integer k , if V has a subset S of size at most k , such that S contains at least one end-vertex of every edge incident to a vertex of T . A graph is H -free if it does not contain H as an induced subgraph. We solve two open problems from the literature by proving that Subset Vertex Cover is NP -complete on subcubic (claw, diamond)-free planar graphs and on 2-unipolar graphs, a subclass of 2 P 3 -free weakly chordal graphs. Our results show for the first time that Subset Vertex Cover is computationally harder than Vertex Cover (under P ≠ NP ). We also prove new polynomial time results, some of which follow from a reduction to Vertex Cover restricted to classes of probe graphs. We first give a dichotomy on graphs where G [ T ] is H -free. Namely, we show that Subset Vertex Cover is polynomial-time solvable on graphs G , for which G [ T ] is H -free, if H = s P 1 + t P 2 and NP -complete otherwise. Moreover, we prove that Subset Vertex Cover is polynomial-time solvable for ( s P 1 + P 2 + P 3 ) -free graphs and bounded mim-width graphs. By combining our new results with known results we obtain a partial complexity classification for Subset Vertex Cover on H -free graphs.

The previously fastest algorithm for deciding the existence of an independent cut had a runtime of O * ( 1 . 4423 n ) , where n is the order of the input graph. We improve this to O * ( 1 . 4143 n ) . In fact, we prove a runtime of O * ( 2 ( 1 2 − α Δ ) n ) on graphs of order n and maximum degree at most Δ , where α Δ = 1 2 + 4 ⌊ Δ 2 ⌋ . Furthermore, we show that the problem is fixed-parameter tractable on graphs of order n and minimum degree at least β n for some β > 1 2 , where β is the parameter.