Domination when the stars are out

Abstract

We algorithmize the recent structural characterization for claw-free graphs by Chudnovsky and Seymour. Building on this result, we show that Dominating Set on claw-free graphs is (i) fixed-parameter tractable and (ii) even possesses a polynomial kernel. To complement these results, we establish that Dominating Set is not fixed-parameter tractable on the slightly larger class of graphs that exclude K 1,4 as an induced subgraph. Our results provide a dichotomy for Dominating Set in K 1,ℓ-free graphs and show that the problem is fixed-parameter tractable if and only if ℓ ≤ 3. Finally, we show that our algorithmization can also be used to show that the related Connected Dominating Set problem is fixed-parameter tractable on claw-free graphs. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.