We study the approximability of the NP-complete Maximum Minimal Feedback Vertex Set problem. Informally, this natural problem seems to lie in an intermediate space between two more well-studied problems of this type: Maximum Minimal Vertex Cover, for which the best achievable approximation ratio is √ n, and Upper Dominating Set, which does not admit any n 1− approximation. We confirm and quantify this intuition by showing the first non-trivial polynomial time approximation for Max Min FVS with a ratio of O(n 2/3 ), as well as a matching hardness of approximation bound of n 2/3− , improving the previous known hardness of n 1/2− . Along the way, we also obtain an O(∆)-approximation and show that this is asymptotically best possible, and we improve the bound for which the problem is NP-hard from ∆ ≥ 9 to ∆ ≥ 6.Having settled the problem's approximability in polynomial time, we move to the context of super-polynomial time. We devise a generalization of our approximation algorithm which, for any desired approximation ratio r, produces an r-approximate solution in time n O(n/r 3/2 ) . This time-approximation trade-off is essentially tight: we show that under the ETH, for any ratio r and > 0, no algorithm can r-approximate this problem in time n O((n/r 3/2 ) 1− ) , hence we precisely characterize the approximability of the problem for the whole spectrum between polynomial and sub-exponential time, up to an arbitrarily small constant in the second exponent.

An upper dominating set is a minimal dominating set in a graph. In the Upper Dominating Set problem, the goal is to find an upper dominating set of maximum size. We study the complexity of parameterized algorithms for Upper Dominating Set, as well as its sub-exponential approximation. First, we prove that, under ETH, k-Upper Dominating Set cannot be solved in time)), and in the same time we show under the same complexity assumption that for any constant ratio r and any ε > 0, there is no r-approximation algorithm running in time O(n k 1−ε ). Then, we settle the problem's complexity parameterized by pathwidth by giving an algorithm running in time O * (6 pw ) (improving the current best O * (7 pw )), and a lower bound showing that our algorithm is the best we can get under the SETH. Furthermore, we obtain a simple sub-exponential approximation algorithm for this problem: an algorithm that produces an r-approximation in time n O(n/r) , for any desired approximation ratio r < n. We finally show that this time-approximation trade-off is tight, up to an arbitrarily small constant in the second exponent: under the randomized ETH, and for any ratio r > 1 and ε > 0, no algorithm can output an r-approximation in time n (n/r) 1−ε . Hence, we completely characterize the approximability of the problem in sub-exponential time.

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A mixed dominating set is a collection of vertices and edges that dominates all vertices and edges of a graph. We study the complexity of exact and parameterized algorithms for \textsc{Mixed Dominating Set}, resolving some open questions. In particular, we settle the problem's complexity parameterized by treewidth and pathwidth by giving an algorithm running in time $O^*(5^{tw})$ (improving the current best $O^*(6^{tw})$), as well as a lower bound showing that our algorithm cannot be improved under the Strong Exponential Time Hypothesis (SETH), even if parameterized by pathwidth (improving a lower bound of $O^*((2 - \varepsilon)^{pw})$). Furthermore, by using a simple but so far overlooked observation on the structure of minimal solutions, we obtain branching algorithms which improve both the best known FPT algorithm for this problem, from $O^*(4.172^k)$ to $O^*(3.510^k)$, and the best known exponential-time exact algorithm, from $O^*(2^n)$ and exponential space, to $O^*(1.912^n)$ and polynomial space. Comment: This paper has been accepted to IPEC 2020