Galactic token sliding

Abstract

Given a graph G and two independent sets Is and It of size k, the INDEPENDENT SET RECONFIGURATION problem asks whether there exists a sequence of independent sets that transforms Is to It such that each independent set is obtained from the previous one using a so-called reconfiguration step. Viewing each independent set as a collection of k tokens placed on the vertices of a graph G, the two most studied reconfiguration steps are token jumping and token sliding. Over a series of papers, it was shown that the TOKEN JUMPING problem is fixed-parameter tractable (for parameter k) when restricted to sparse graph classes, such as planar, bounded treewidth, and nowhere dense graphs. As for the TOKEN SLIDING problem, almost nothing is known. We remedy this situation by showing that TOKEN SLIDING is fixed-parameter tractable on graphs of bounded degree, planar graphs, and chordal graphs of bounded clique number. © 2023 Elsevier Inc.