Looking at the Stars

The problem of packing k vertex-disjoint copies of a graph H into another graph G is NP-complete if H has more than two vertices in some connected component. In the framework of parameterized complexity we analyze a particular family of instances of this problem, namely the packing of stars. We prove that packing k copies of H = K1, s is fixed-parameter tractable and give a quadratic kernel for the general case. When we consider the special case of s=2, i.e. H being a star with two leaves, we give a linear kernel and an algorithm running in time \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}${\mathcal O}^*(2^{5.3k})$\end{document}.