Feedback Set Problems on Bounded-Degree (Planar) Graphs

Tian Bai; Yixin Cao; Mingyu Xiao

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arXiv · 2605.11407

Feedback Set Problems on Bounded-Degree (Planar) Graphs

Tian Bai·Yixin Cao·Mingyu Xiao

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Abstract

The feedback set problems are about removing the minimum number of vertices or edges from a graph to break all its cycles. Much effort has gone into understanding their complexity on planar graphs as well as on graphs of bounded degree. We obtain a complete complexity classification for these problems on bounded-degree digraphs, including the planar case. In particular, we show that both problems are $\NP$-complete on digraphs of maximum degree three, while on planar digraphs the feedback vertex set problem is polynomial-time solvable when each vertex has either indegree at most one or outdegree at most one, and $\NP$-complete otherwise. We also give tight degree bounds for the connected feedback vertex set problem on undirected graphs, both planar and non-planar. We close the paper with a historical account of results for feedback vertex set on undirected graphs of bounded degree.

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BibTeX RIS

Tian Bai, Yixin Cao, Mingyu Xiao. 2026-05-12. Feedback Set Problems on Bounded-Degree (Planar) Graphs. https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.11407

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