Classes of intersection digraphs with good algorithmic properties

Abstract

While intersection graphs play a central role in the algorithmic analysis of hard problems on undirected graphs, the role of intersection digraphs in algorithms is much less understood. We present several contributions towards a better understanding of the algorithmic treatment of intersection digraphs. First, we introduce natural classes of intersection digraphs that generalize several classes studied in the literature. Second, we define the directed locally checkable vertex (DLCV) problems, which capture many well-studied problems on digraphs, such as (Independent) Dominating Set, Kernel, and (Formula presented.) -Homomorphism. Third, we give a new width measure of digraphs, bi-mim-width, and show that the DLCV problems are polynomial-time solvable when we are provided a decomposition of small bi-mim-width. Fourth, we show that several classes of intersection digraphs have bounded bi-mim-width, implying that we can solve all DLCV problems on these classes in polynomial time given an intersection representation of the input digraph. We identify reflexivity as a useful condition to obtain intersection digraph classes of bounded bi-mim-width, and therefore to obtain positive algorithmic results. © 2023 The Authors. Journal of Graph Theory published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.