On kernels by rainbow paths in arc-coloured digraphs

Abstract

In 2018, Bai, Fujita and Zhang [Discrete Math. 341 (2018), no. 6, 1523–1533] introduced the concept of a kernel by rainbow paths (for short, RP-kernel) of an arc-coloured digraph DD, which is a subset SS of vertices of DD such that (aa) there exists no rainbow path for any pair of distinct vertices of SS, and (bb) every vertex outside SS can reach SS by a rainbow path in DD. They showed that it is NP-hard to recognize whether an arc-coloured digraph has an RP-kernel and it is NP-complete to decide whether an arc-coloured tournament has an RP-kernel. In this paper, we give the sufficient conditions for the existence of an RP-kernel in arc-coloured unicyclic digraphs, semicomplete digraphs, quasi-transitive digraphs and bipartite tournaments, and prove that these arc-coloured digraphs have RP-kernels if certain “short” cycles and certain “small” induced subdigraphs are rainbow.

Keywords

• arc-coloured digraphs
• kernels
• kernels by rainbow paths
• 05c20
• 05c12
• 05c07