Kernelization of Whitney Switches

Abstract

A fundamental theorem of Whitney from 1933 asserts that 2-connected graphs $G$ and $H$ are 2-isomorphic, or equivalently, their cycle matroids are isomorphic if and only if $G$ can be transformed into $H$ by a series of operations called Whitney switches. In this paper we consider the quantitative question arising from Whitney's theorem: Given two 2-isomorphic graphs, can we transform one into another by applying at most $k$ Whitney switches? This problem is already \sf NP-complete for cycles, and we investigate its parameterized complexity. We show that the problem admits a kernel of size $\mathcal{O}(k)$ and thus is fixed-parameter tractable when parameterized by $k$.