Parameterized problems related to Seidel's switching

Abstract

Seidel's switching is a graph operation which makes a given vertex adjacent to precisely those vertices to which it was non-adjacent before, while keeping the rest of the graph unchanged. Two graphs are called switching-equivalent if one can be made isomorphic to the other by a sequence of switches. In this paper, we continue the study of computational complexity aspects of Seidel's switching, concentrating on Fixed Parameter Complexity. Among other results we show that switching to a graph with at most k edges, to a graph of maximum degree at most k, to a k-regular graph, or to a graph with minimum degree at least k are fixed parameter tractable problems, where k is the parameter. On the other hand, switching to a graph that contains a given fixed graph as an induced subgraph is W[1]-complete. We also show the NP-completeness of switching to a graph with a clique of linear size, and of switching to a graph with small number of edges. A consequence of the latter result is the NP-completeness of Maximum Likelihood Decoding of graph theoretic codes based on complete graphs. © 2011 Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science (DMTCS).