Minimum Cost Homomorphisms to Semicomplete Multipartite Digraphs

Abstract

For digraphs $D$ and $H$, a mapping $f: V(D)\dom V(H)$ is a {\em homomorphism of $D$ to $H$} if $uv\in A(D)$ implies $f(u)f(v)\in A(H).$ For a fixed directed or undirected graph $H$ and an input graph $D$, the problem of verifying whether there exists a homomorphism of $D$ to $H$ has been studied in a large number of papers. We study an optimization version of this decision problem. Our optimization problem is motivated by a real-world problem in defence logistics and was introduced very recently by the authors and M. Tso. Suppose we are given a pair of digraphs $D,H$ and a positive integral cost $c_i(u)$ for each $u\in V(D)$ and $i\in V(H)$. The cost of a homomorphism $f$ of $D$ to $H$ is $\sum_{u\in V(D)}c_{f(u)}(u)$. Let $H$ be a fixed digraph. The minimum cost homomorphism problem for $H$, MinHOMP($H$), is stated as follows: For input digraph $D$ and costs $c_i(u)$ for each $u\in V(D)$ and $i\in V(H)$, verify whether there is a homomorphism of $D$ to $H$ and, if it does exist, find such a homomorphism of minimum cost. In our previous paper we obtained a dichotomy classification of the time complexity of \MiP for $H$ being a semicomplete digraph. In this paper we extend the classification to semicomplete $k$-partite digraphs, $k\ge 3$, and obtain such a classification for bipartite tournaments.