INVERTIBILITY OF DIGRAPHS AND TOURNAMENTS^*

For an oriented graph D and a set X \subseteq V (D), the inversion of X in D is the digraph obtained by reversing the orientations of the edges of D with both endpoints in X. The inversion number of D, inv(D), is the minimum number of inversions which can be applied in turn to D to produce an acyclic digraph. Answering a recent question of Bang-Jensen, da Silva, and Havet we show that, for each k \in \BbbN and tournament T, the problem of deciding whether inv(T) \leq k is solvable in time O_k(|V (T)|²), which is tight for all k. In particular, the problem is fixed-parameter tractable when parameterized by k. On the other hand, we build on their work to prove their conjecture that for k \geq 1 the problem of deciding whether a general oriented graph D has inv(D) \leq k is NP-complete. We also construct oriented graphs with inversion number equal to twice their cycle transversal number, confirming another conjecture of Bang-Jensen, da Silva, and Havet, and we provide a counterexample to their conjecture concerning the inversion number of so-called dijoin digraphs while proving that it holds in certain cases. Finally, we asymptotically solve the natural extremal question in this setting, improving on previous bounds of Belkhechine, Bouaziz, Boudabbous, and Pouzet to show that the maximum inversion number of an n-vertex tournament is (1 + o(1))n.