Séminaire 6 mai 2011

The Computational Complexity of Disconnected Cut and 2K2-Partition

Barnaby Martin, Algorithms and Complexity in Durham (ACiD), University of Durham

For a connected graph G=(V,E), a subset U of V is called a disconnected cut if U disconnects the graph and the subgraph induced by U is disconnected as well. We show that the problem to test whether a graph has a disconnected cut is NP-complete. This problem is polynomially equivalent to the following problems: testing if a graph has a 2K2-partition, testing if a graph allows a vertex-surjective homomorphism to the reflexive 4-cycle and testing if a graph has a spanning subgraph that consists of at most two bicliques. Hence, as an immediate consequence, these three decision problems are NP-complete as well. This settles an open problem frequently posed in each of the four settings.


Last modified: Tue May 3 08:54:09 CEST 2011