XALP-completeness of parameterized problems on planar graphs

Publication date

2026-06-15

Authors

Bodlaender, HansORCID 0000-0002-9297-3330ISNI 0000000081342475
Szilágyi, Krisztina

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Advisors

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Document Type

Article
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Abstract

The class XNLP consists of (parameterized) problems that can be solved non-deterministically in f(k)nO(1) time and g(k)logn space, where n is the size of the input instance and k the parameter. The class XALP consists of problems that can be solved in the above time and space with access to an additional stack. These two classes are a “natural home” for many standard graph problems and their generalizations. In this paper, we show the hardness of several problems on planar graphs, parameterized by outerplanarity, treewidth and pathwidth, thus strengthening several existing results. In particular, we show XALP-completeness of the following problems parameterized by outerplanarity: All-or-Nothing Flow , Target Outdegree Orientation , Capacitated (Red–Blue) Dominating Set , Target Set Selection etc. We also show the XNLP-completeness of Scattered Set parameterized by pathwidth and XALP-completeness parameterized by treewidth and outerplanarity.

Keywords

Outerplanarity, Parameterized complexity, Planar graphs, XALP, XNLP, Discrete Mathematics and Combinatorics, Applied Mathematics

Citation

Bodlaender, H L & Szilágyi, K 2026, 'XALP-completeness of parameterized problems on planar graphs', Discrete Applied Mathematics, vol. 386, pp. 156-174. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dam.2026.01.021