Abstract
In this thesis, we study the Parameterized Complexity of combinatorial problems on graphs. More precisely, we present a multitude of dynamic programming algorithms together with reductions showing optimality for some of them. We mostly deal with the graph parameter of treewidth, which can be seen as a measure of how close a graph is to the topological structure of a tree. We also parameterize some of our algorithms by two other parameters, namely the size of a requested solution and the maximum degree of the input graph. We obtain a number of results, some of which are listed in the following. We estimate the number of labeled graphs of bounded treewidth. We extend the horizon of applicability of the theory of contraction Bidimensionality further than apex-minor free graphs, leading to a wider applicability of the design of subexponential dynamic programming algorithms. We show that the Catalan structure technique, that is a tool used to improve algorithm efficiency for connectivity problems where the input graph is restricted to be sparse, cannot be applied to all planar connectivity problems. We consider the F-M-Deletion problem that, given a set of graphs F, a graph G, and an integer k, asks if we can remove at most k vertices from G such that the remaining graph does not contain any graph of F as a minor. We also consider the topological version of this problem, namely F-TM-Deletion. Both problems generalize some well-known vertex deletion problems, namely Vertex Cover, Feedback Vertex Set, and Vertex Planarization. Depending on the set F, we use distinct dynamic programming techniques to solve F-M-Deletion and F-TM-Deletion when parameterized by treewidth. Namely, we use standard techniques, the rank based approach, and the framework of boundaried graphs. Finally, we apply these techniques to two problems originating from Networks, namely a variation of the classical dominating set problem and a problem that consists in finding a spanning tree with specific properties, and to a problem from Bioinformatics, namely that of construcing a tree that contains as a minor (or topological minor) a set of given trees corresponding to the evolutionary relationships between sets of species.