Approximating maximum subgraphs without short cycles

We study approximation algorithms, integrality gaps, and hardness of approximation, of two problems related to cycles of "small" length k in a given graph. The instance for these problems is a graph G = (V,E) and an integer k. The k -Cycle Transversal problem is to find a minimum edge subset of E that intersects every k-cycle. The k -Cycle-Free Subgraph problem is to find a maximum edge subset of E without k-cycles. The 3-Cycle Transversal problem (covering all triangles) was studied by Krivelevich [Discrete Mathematics, 1995], where an LP-based 2-approximation algorithm was presented. The integrality gap of the underlying LP was posed as an open problem in the work of Krivelevich. We resolve this problem by showing a sequence of graphs with integrality gap approaching 2. In addition, we show that if 3-Cycle Transversal admits a (2 - ε)-approximation algorithm, then so does the Vertex-Cover problem, and thus improving the ratio 2 is unlikely. We also show that k -Cycle Transversal admits a (k - 1)-approximation algorithm, which extends the result of Krivelevich from k = 3 to any k. Based on this, for odd k we give an algorithm for k -Cycle-Free Subgraph with ratio k-1/2k-3 = 1/2 + 1/4k-6; this improves over the trivial ratio of 1/2. Our main result however is for the k -Cycle-Free Subgraph problem with even values of k. For any k = 2r, we give an Ω(n - 1/r + 1/r(2r-1)-ε)-approximation scheme with running time ε^-Ω(1/ε) poly(n). This improves over the ratio Ω(n ^-1/r ) that can be deduced from extremal graph theory. In particular, for k = 4 the improvement is from Ω(n ^-1/2) to Ω(1/n ^{- 1/3 - ε} ). Similar results are shown for the problem of covering cycles of length ≤ k or finding a maximum subgraph without cycles of length ≤ k.