Computing eternal vertex cover number of maximal outerplanar graphs in linear time

Eternal vertex cover problem is a variant of the classical vertex cover problem modeled as a two player attacker-defender game. Computing the eternal vertex cover number of graphs is known to be NP-hard in general and even for bipartite graphs. There is a quadratic complexity algorithm known for thi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Theoretical computer science Vol. 1056; p. 115530
Main Authors:	Babu, Jasine, Murali Krishnan, K., Prabhakaran, Veena, Warrier, Nandini J.
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	Elsevier B.V 21.11.2025
Subjects:	Eternal vertex cover Linear time algorithm Maximal outerplanar graph Linear time algorithm Maximal outerplanar graph Eternal vertex cover
ISSN:	0304-3975
Online Access:	Get full text
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Summary:	Eternal vertex cover problem is a variant of the classical vertex cover problem modeled as a two player attacker-defender game. Computing the eternal vertex cover number of graphs is known to be NP-hard in general and even for bipartite graphs. There is a quadratic complexity algorithm known for this problem for chordal graphs. Maximal outerplanar graphs form a subclass of chordal graphs, for which no algorithm of sub-quadratic time complexity is known. In this paper, we obtain a linear time recursive algorithm for computing eternal vertex cover number of maximal outerplanar graphs.
ISSN:	0304-3975
DOI:	10.1016/j.tcs.2025.115530