Upper Dominating Set: Tight Algorithms for Pathwidth and Sub-exponential Approximation

Abstract

An upper dominating set is a minimal dominating set in a graph. In the Upper Dominating Set problem, the goal is to find an upper dominating set of maximum size. We study the complexity of parameterized algorithms for Upper Dominating Set, as well as its sub-exponential approximation. First, we prove that, under ETH, k -Upper Dominating Set cannot be solved in time $O(n^{o(k)})$ (improving on $O(n^{o(\sqrt{k})})$), and in the same time we show under the same complexity assumption that for any constant ratio r and any $\varepsilon > 0$, there is no r-approximation algorithm running in time $O(n^{k^{1-\varepsilon }})$. Then, we settle the problem’s complexity parameterized by pathwidth by giving an algorithm running in time $O^*(6^{pw})$ (improving the current best $O^*(7^{pw})$), and a lower bound showing that our algorithm is the best we can get under the SETH. Furthermore, we obtain a simple sub-exponential approximation algorithm for this problem: an algorithm that produces an r-approximation in time $n^{O(n/r)}$, for any desired approximation ratio $r < n$. We finally show that this time-approximation trade-off is tight, up to an arbitrarily small constant in the second exponent: under the randomized ETH, and for any ratio $r > 1$ and $\varepsilon > 0$, no algorithm can output an r-approximation in time $n^{(n/r)^{1-\varepsilon }}$. Hence, we completely characterize the approximability of the problem in sub-exponential time.