The "art of trellis decoding" is fixed-parameter tractable

Abstract: Given n subspaces of a finite-dimensional vector space over a fixed finite field $\mathbb F$, we wish to find a linear layout $V_1,V_2,\ldots,V_n$ of the subspaces such that $\dim((V_1+V_2+\cdots+V_i) \cap (V_{i+1}+\cdots+V_n))\le k$ for all i, such a linear layout is said to have width at most k. When restricted to 1-dimensional subspaces, this problem is equivalent to computing the trellis-width (or minimum trellis state-complexity) of a linear code in coding theory and computing the path-width of an $\mathbb F$-represented matroid in matroid theory. We present a fixed-parameter tractable algorithm to construct a linear layout of width at most k, if it exists, for input subspaces of a finite-dimensional vector space over $\mathbb F$. As corollaries, we obtain a fixed-parameter tractable algorithm to produce a path-decomposition of width at most k for an input $\mathbb F$-represented matroid of path-width at most k, and a fixed-parameter tractable algorithm to find a linear rank-decomposition of width at most k for an input graph of linear rank-width at most k. In both corollaries, no such algorithms were known previously. It was previously known that a fixed-parameter tractable algorithm exists for the decision version of the problem for matroid path-width, a theorem by Geelen, Gerards, and Whittle~(2002) implies that for each fixed finite field $\mathbb F$, there are finitely many forbidden $\mathbb F$-representable minors for the class of matroids of path-width at most k. An algorithm by Hlin\v{e}n\'y (2006) can detect a minor in an input $\mathbb F$-represented matroid of bounded branch-width. However, this indirect approach would not produce an actual path-decomposition. Our algorithm is the first one to construct such a path-decomposition and does not depend on the finiteness of forbidden minors.