A classical branch of graph algorithms is graph transversals, where one seeks a minimum-weight subset of nodes in a node-weighted graph $G$ which intersects all copies of subgraphs $F$ from a fixed family $\mathcal F$. Many such graph transversal problems have been shown to admit polynomial-time approximation schemes (PTASs) for planar input graphs $G$, using a variety of techniques like the shifting technique [B. S. Baker, J. ACM, 41 (1994), pp. 153--180], bidimensionality [F. V. Fomin et al., Bidimensionality and EPTAS, in Proceedings of SODA 2011, ACM, New York, SIAM, Philadelphia, 2011, pp. 748--759], or connectivity domination [V. Cohen-Addad et al., Approximating connectivity domination in weighted bounded-genus graphs, in Proceedings of STOC 2016, ACM, New York, 2016, pp. 584--597]. These techniques do not seem to apply to graph transversals with parity constraints, which have recently received significant attention, but for which no PTASs are known. In the Even Cycle Transversal (ECT) problem, the goal is to find a minimum-weight hitting set for the set of even cycles in an undirected graph. For ECT, Fiorini, Joret, and Pietropaoli [ Hitting diamonds and growing cacti, in Proceedings of IPCO 2010, Lecture Notes in Comput. Sci. 6080, Springer, Berlin, 2010, pp. 191--204] showed that the integrality gap of the standard covering LP relaxation is $\Theta(\log n)$, and that adding sparsity inequalities reduces the integrality gap to 10. Our main result is a primal-dual algorithm that yields a $47/7\approx6.71$-approximation for ECT on node-weighted planar graphs, and an integrality gap upper bound of the same value for the standard LP relaxation on node-weighted planar graphs.

A classical branch of graph algorithms is graph transversals, where one seeks a minimum-weight subset of nodes in a node-weighted graph G which intersects all copies of subgraphs F from a fixed family F. Many such graph transversal problems have been shown to admit polynomial-time approximation schemes (PTAS) for planar input graphs G, using a variety of techniques like the shifting technique (Baker, J. ACM 1994), bidimensionality (Fomin et al., SODA 2011), or connectivity domination (Cohen-Addad et al., STOC 2016). These techniques do not seem to apply to graph transversals with parity constraints, which have recently received significant attention, but for which no PTASs are known. In the even-cycle transversal (ECT) problem, the goal is to find a minimum-weight hitting set for the set of even cycles in an undirected graph. For ECT, Fiorini et al. (IPCO 2010) showed that the integrality gap of the standard covering LP relaxation is Θ(log n), and that adding sparsity inequalities reduces the integrality gap to 10. Our main result is a primal-dual algorithm that yields a 47/7 ≈ 6.71-approximation for ECT on node-weighted planar graphs, and an integrality gap of the same value for the standard LP relaxation on node-weighted planar graphs.

In the Directed Long Cycle Hitting Set} problem we are given a directed graph $G$, and the task is to find a set $S$ of at most $k$ vertices/arcs such that $G-S$ has no cycle of length longer than $\ell$. We show that the problem can be solved in time $2^{\mathcal O(\ell k^3\log k + k^5\log k\log\ell)}\cdot n^{\mathcal O(1)}$, that is, it is fixed-parameter tractable (FPT) parameterized by $k$ and $\ell$. This algorithm can be seen as a far-reaching generalization of the fixed-parameter tractability of {\sc Mixed Graph Feedback Vertex Set} [Bonsma and Lokshtanov WADS 2011], which is already a common generalization of the fixed-parameter tractability of (undirected) {\sc Feedback Vertex Set} and the {\sc Directed Feedback Vertex Set} problems, two classic results in parameterized algorithms. The algorithm requires significant insights into the structure of graphs without directed cycles length longer than $\ell$ and can be seen as an exact version of the approximation algorithm following from the Erd{ő}s-P{ó}sa property for long cycles in directed graphs proved by Kreutzer and Kawarabayashi [STOC 2015].

The Directed Feedback Vertex Set (DFVS) problem takes as input a directed graph G and seeks a smallest vertex set S that hits all cycles in G. This is one of Karp’s 21 $$\mathsf {NP}$$ -complete problems. Resolving the parameterized complexity status of DFVS was a long-standing open problem until Chen et al. in 2008 showed its fixed-parameter tractability via a $$4^kk! n^{\mathcal {O}(1)}$$ -time algorithm, where $$k = |S|$$ . Here we show fixed-parameter tractability of two generalizations of DFVS: We also solve the corresponding arc versions of these problems by fixed-parameter algorithms.