Parameterized Algorithms for Editing to Uniform Cluster Graph

Given a graph $G=(V,E)$ and an integer $k\in \mathbb{N}$, we investigate the 2-Eigenvalue Vertex Deletion (2-EVD) problem. The objective is to remove at most $k$ vertices such that the adjacency matrix of the resulting graph has at most two eigenvalues. It is established that the adjacency matrix of a graph has at most two eigenvalues if and only if the graph is a collection of equal-sized cliques. Thus, the 2-Eigenvalue Vertex Deletion amounts to removing a set of at most $k$ vertices to transform the graph into a collection of equal-sized cliques. The 2-Eigenvalue Edge Editing (2-EEE), 2-Eigenvalue Edge Deletion (2-EED) and 2-Eigenvalue Edge Addition (2-EEA) problems are defined analogously. We present a kernel of size $\mathcal{O}(k^{3})$ for $2$-EVD, along with an FPT algorithm with a running time of $\mathcal{O}^{*}(2^{k})$. For the problem $2$-EEE, we provide a kernel of size $\mathcal{O}(k^{2})$. Additionally, we present linear kernels of size $5k$ and $6k$ for $2$-EEA and $2$-EED respectively. For the $2$-EED, we also construct an algorithm with running time $\mathcal{O}^{*}(1.47^{k})$ . These results address open questions posed by Misra et al. (ISAAC 2023) regarding the complexity of these problems when parameterized by the solution size.