Algorithms and complexity for path covers of temporal DAGs: when is Dilworth dynamic?

In this paper, we study a dynamic analogue of the Path Cover problem, which can be solved in polynomial-time in directed acyclic graphs. A temporal digraph has an arc set that changes over discrete time-steps, if the underlying digraph (the union of all the arc sets) is acyclic, then we have a temporal DAG. A temporal path is a directed path in the underlying digraph, such that the time-steps of arcs are strictly increasing along the path. Two temporal paths are temporally disjoint if they do not occupy any vertex at the same time. A temporal (resp. temporally disjoint) path cover is a collection of (resp. temporally disjoint) temporal paths that covers all vertices. In this paper, we study the computational complexities of the problems of finding a temporal (disjoint) path cover with minimum cardinality, denoted as Temporal Path Cover (TPC) and Temporally Disjoint Path Cover (TD-PC). We show that both problems are NP-hard even when the underlying DAG is planar, bipartite, subcubic, and there are only two arc-disjoint time-steps. Moreover, TD-PC remains NP-hard even on temporal oriented trees. In contrast, we show that TPC is polynomial-time solvable on temporal oriented trees by a reduction to Clique Cover for (static undirected) weakly chordal graphs (a subclass of perfect graphs for which Clique Cover admits an efficient algorithm). This highlights an interesting algorithmic difference between the two problems. Although it is NP-hard on temporal oriented trees, TD-PC becomes polynomial-time solvable on temporal oriented lines and temporal rooted directed trees. We also show that TPC (resp. TD-PC) admits an XP (resp. FPT) time algorithm with respect to parameter tmax + tw, where tmax is the maximum time-step, and tw is the treewidth of the underlying static undirected graph.