A general kernelization technique for domination and independence problems in sparse classes

We unify and extend previous kernelization techniques in sparse classes [6,17] by defining water lilies and show how they can be used in bounded expansion classes to construct linear bikernels for (r, c)-Dominating Set, (r, c)-Scattered Set, Total r-Domination, r-Roman Domination, and a problem we call (r, [λ, μ])-Domination (implying a bikernel for r-Perfect Code). At the cost of slightly changing the output graph class our bikernels can be turned into kernels. We further demonstrate how these constructions can be combined to create 'multikernels', meaning graphs that represent kernels for multiple problems at once. Concretely, we show that r-Dominating Set, Total r-Domination, and r-Roman Domination admit a multikernel; as well as r-Dominating Set and 2r-Independent Set for multiple values of r at once.