The clique operator on circular-arc graphs

A circular-arc graphG is the intersection graph of a collection of arcs on the circle and such a collection is called a model of G. Say that the model is proper when no arc of the collection contains another one, it is Helly when the arcs satisfy the Helly Property, while the model is proper Helly when it is simultaneously proper and Helly. A graph admitting a Helly (resp. proper Helly) model is called a Helly (resp. proper Helly) circular-arc graph. The clique graphK(G) of a graph G is the intersection graph of its cliques. The iterated clique graphKⁱ(G) of G is defined by K⁰(G)=G and Kⁱ⁺¹(G)=K(Kⁱ(G)). In this paper, we consider two problems on clique graphs of circular-arc graphs. The first is to characterize clique graphs of Helly circular-arc graphs and proper Helly circular-arc graphs. The second is to characterize the graph to which a general circular-arc graph K-converges, if it is K-convergent. We propose complete solutions to both problems, extending the partial results known so far. The methods lead to linear time recognition algorithms, for both problems.     

Algorithms for clique-independent sets on subclasses of circular-arc graphs

A circular-arc graph is the intersection graph of arcs on a circle. A Helly circular-arc graph is a circular-arc graph admitting a model whose arcs satisfy the Helly property. A clique-independent set of a graph is a set of pairwise disjoint cliques of the graph. It is NP-hard to compute the maximum cardinality of a clique-independent set for a general graph. In the present paper, we propose polynomial time algorithms for finding the maximum cardinality and weight of a clique-independent set of a -free CA graph. Also, we apply the algorithms to the special case of an HCA graph. The complexity of the proposed algorithm for the cardinality problem in HCA graphs is O(n). This represents an improvement over the existing algorithm by Guruswami and Pandu Rangan, whose complexity is O(n²). These algorithms suppose that an HCA model of the graph is given.     

Clique-Coloring Circular-Arc Graphs

A clique-coloring of a graph is a coloring of its vertices such that no maximal clique of size at least two is monochromatic. A circular-arc graph is the intersection graph of a family of arcs in a circle. We show that every circular-arc graph is 3-clique-colorable. Moreover, we characterize which circular-arc graphs are 2-clique-colorable. Our proof is constructive and gives a polynomial-time algorithm to find an optimal clique-coloring of a given circular-arc graph.     

Self-clique graphs and matrix permutations

The clique graph of a graph is the intersection graph of its (maximal) cliques. A graph is self-clique when it is isomorphic with its clique graph, and is clique-Helly when its cliques satisfy the Helly property. We prove that a graph is clique-Helly and self-clique if and only if it admits a quasi-symmetric clique matrix, that is, a clique matrix whose families of row and column vectors are identical. We also give a characterization of such graphs in terms of vertex-clique duality. We describe new classes of self-clique and 2-self-clique graphs. Further, we consider some problems on permuted matrices (matrices obtained by permuting the rows and/or columns of a given matrix). We prove that deciding whether a (0,1)-matrix admits a symmetric (quasi-symmetric) permuted matrix is graph (hypergraph) isomorphism complete. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Graph Theory 44: 178–192, 2003     

Characterizations and recognition of circular-arc graphs and subclasses: A survey

Circular graphs are intersection graphs of arcs on a circle. These graphs are reported to have been studied since 1964, and they have been receiving considerable attention since a series of papers by Tucker in the 1970s. Various subclasses of circular-arc graphs have also been studied. Among these are the proper circular-arc graphs, unit circular-arc graphs, Helly circular-arc graphs and co-bipartite circular-arc graphs. Several characterizations and recognition algorithms have been formulated for circular-arc graphs and its subclasses. In particular, it should be mentioned that linear time algorithms are known for all these classes of graphs. In the present paper, we survey these characterizations and recognition algorithms, with emphasis on the linear time algorithms.     

On clique convergent graphs

A graphG isconvergent when there is some finite integern 0, such that then-th iterated clique graphK ⁿ(G) has only one vertex. The smallest suchn is theindex ofG. TheHelly defect of a convergent graph is the smallestn such thatK ⁿ(G) is clique Helly, that is, its maximal cliques satisfy the Helly property. Bandelt and Prisner proved that the Helly defect of a chordal graph is at most one and asked whether there is a graph whose Helly defect exceeds the difference of its index and diameter by more than one. In the present paper an affirmative answer to the question is given. For any arbitrary finite integern, a graph is exhibited, the Helly defect of which exceeds byn the difference of its index and diameter.     

On self-clique graphs with given clique sizes, II

The clique graph of a graph G is the graph obtained by taking the cliques of G as vertices, and two vertices are adjacent if and only if the corresponding cliques have a non-empty intersection. A graph is self-clique if it is isomorphic to its clique graph. We give a new characterization of the set of all connected self-clique graphs having all cliques but two of size 2.     

Partial characterizations of circle graphs

A circle graph is the intersection graph of a family of chords on a circle. There is no known characterization of circle graphs by forbidden induced subgraphs that do not involve the notions of local equivalence or pivoting operations. We characterize circle graphs by a list of minimal forbidden induced subgraphs when the graph belongs to one of the following classes: linear domino graphs, P₄-tidy graphs, and tree-cographs. We also completely characterize by minimal forbidden induced subgraphs the class of unit Helly circle graphs, which are those circle graphs having a model whose chords have all the same length, are pairwise different, and satisfy the Helly property.     

Obstructions to chordal circular-arc graphs of small independence number

A blocking quadruple (BQ) is a quadruple of vertices of a graph such that any two vertices of the quadruple either miss (have no neighbours on) some path connecting the remaining two vertices of the quadruple, or are connected by some path missed by the remaining two vertices. This is akin to the notion of asteroidal triple used in the classical characterization of interval graphs by Lekkerkerker and Boland [Klee, V., What are the intersection graphs of arcs in a circle?, American Mathematical Monthly 76 (1976), pp. 810–813.].In this note, we first observe that blocking quadruples are obstructions for circular-arc graphs. We then focus on chordal graphs, and study the relationship between the structure of chordal graphs and the presence/absence of blocking quadruples.Our contribution is two-fold. Firstly, we provide a forbidden induced subgraph characterization of chordal graphs without blocking quadruples. In particular, we observe that all the forbidden subgraphs are variants of the subgraphs forbidden for interval graphs [Klee, V., What are the intersection graphs of arcs in a circle?, American Mathematical Monthly 76 (1976), pp. 810–813.]. Secondly, we show that the absence of blocking quadruples is sufficient to guarantee that a chordal graph with no independent set of size five is a circular-arc graph. In our proof we use a novel geometric approach, constructing a circular-arc representation by traversing around a carefully chosen clique tree.     

On hereditary clique-Helly self-clique graphs

A graph is clique-Helly if any family of mutually intersecting (maximal) cliques has non-empty intersection, and it is hereditary clique-Helly (HCH) if its induced subgraphs are clique-Helly. The clique graph of a graph G is the intersection graph of its cliques, and G is self-clique if it is connected and isomorphic to its clique graph. We show that every HCH graph is an induced subgraph of a self-clique HCH graph, and give a characterization of self-clique HCH graphs in terms of their constructibility starting from certain digraphs with some forbidden subdigraphs. We also specialize this results to involutive HCH graphs, i.e. self-clique HCH graphs whose vertex-clique bipartite graph admits a part-switching involution.     

Recognizing Helly Edge-Path-Tree graphs and their clique graphs

We present a unifying procedure for recognizing intersection graphs of Helly families of paths in a tree and their clique graphs. The Helly property makes it possible to look at these recognition problems as variants of the Graph Realization Problem, namely, the problem of recognizing Edge-Path-Tree matrices. Our result heavily relies on the notion of pie introduced in [M.C. Golumbic, R.E. Jamison, The edge intersection graphs of paths in a tree, Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Series B 38 (1985) 8-22] and on the observation that Helly Edge-Path-Tree matrices form a self-dual class of Helly matrices. Coupled to the notion of reduction presented in the paper, these facts are also exploited to reprove and slightly refine some known results for Edge-Path-Tree graphs.     

Partial Characterizations of Circular-Arc Graphs

A circular-arc graph is the intersection graph of a family of arcs on a circle. A characterization by forbidden induced subgraphs for this class of graphs is not known, and in this work we present a partial result in this direction. We characterize circular-arc graphs by a list of minimal forbidden induced subgraphs when the graph belongs to the following classes: diamond-free graphs, P₄-free graphs, paw-free graphs, and claw-free chordal graphs.     

Solving the path cover problem on circular-arc graphs by using an approximation algorithm

A path cover of a graph G=(V,E) is a family of vertex-disjoint paths that covers all vertices in V. Given a graph G, the path cover problem is to find a path cover of minimum cardinality. This paper presents a simple O(n)-time approximation algorithm for the path cover problem on circular-arc graphs given a set of n arcs with endpoints sorted. The cardinality of the path cover found by the approximation algorithm is at most one more than the optimal one. By using the result, we reduce the path cover problem on circular-arc graphs to the Hamiltonian cycle and Hamiltonian path problems on the same class of graphs in O(n) time. Hence the complexity of the path cover problem on circular-arc graphs is the same as those of the Hamiltonian cycle and Hamiltonian path problems on circular-arc graphs.     

Clique-critical graphs: Maximum size and recognition

The clique graph of G, K(G), is the intersection graph of the family of cliques (maximal complete sets) of G. Clique-critical graphs were defined as those whose clique graph changes whenever a vertex is removed. We prove that if G has m edges then any clique-critical graph in K^-1(G) has at most 2m vertices, which solves a question posed by Escalante and Toft [On clique-critical graphs, J. Combin. Theory B 17 (1974) 170-182]. The proof is based on a restatement of their characterization of clique-critical graphs. Moreover, the bound is sharp. We also show that the problem of recognizing clique-critical graphs is NP-complete.     

Solving the canonical representation and Star System Problems for proper circular-arc graphs in logspace

We present a logspace algorithm that constructs a canonical intersection model for a given proper circular-arc graph, where canonical means that isomorphic graphs receive identical models. This implies that the recognition and the isomorphism problems for these graphs are solvable in logspace. For the broader class of concave-round graphs, which still possess (not necessarily proper) circular-arc models, we show that a canonical circular-arc model can also be constructed in logspace. As a building block for these results, we design a logspace algorithm for computing canonical circular-arc models of circular-arc hypergraphs. This class of hypergraphs corresponds to matrices with the circular ones property, which play an important role in computational genomics. Our results imply that there is a logspace algorithm that decides whether a given matrix has this property.Furthermore, we consider the Star System Problem that consists in reconstructing a graph from its closed neighborhood hypergraph. We show that this problem is solvable in logarithmic space for the classes of proper circular-arc, concave-round, and co-convex graphs.Note that solving a problem in logspace implies that it is solvable by a parallel algorithm of the class AC¹. For the problems under consideration, at most AC² algorithms were known earlier.     

Partial characterizations of clique-perfect graphs II: Diamond-free and Helly circular-arc graphs

A clique-transversal of a graph G is a subset of vertices that meets all the cliques of G. A clique-independent set is a collection of pairwise vertex-disjoint cliques. A graph G is clique-perfect if the sizes of a minimum clique-transversal and a maximum clique-independent set are equal for every induced subgraph of G. The list of minimal forbidden induced subgraphs for the class of clique-perfect graphs is not known. Another open question concerning clique-perfect graphs is the complexity of the recognition problem. Recently we were able to characterize clique-perfect graphs by a restricted list of forbidden induced subgraphs when the graph belongs to two different subclasses of claw-free graphs. These characterizations lead to polynomial time recognition of clique-perfect graphs in these classes of graphs. In this paper we solve the characterization problem in two new classes of graphs: diamond-free and Helly circular-arc () graphs. This last characterization leads to a polynomial time recognition algorithm for clique-perfect graphs.     

Graph relations,clique divergence and surface triangulations

This work has two aims: first, we introduce a powerful technique for proving clique divergence when the graph satisfies a certain symmetry condition. Second, we prove that each closed surface admits a clique divergent triangulation. By definition, a graph is clique divergent if the orders of its iterated clique graphs tend to infinity, and the clique graph of a graph is the intersection graph of its maximal complete subgraphs. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Graph Theory     

Clique graphs of time graphs

A simple, finite graph G is called a time graph (equivalently, an indifference graph) if there is an injective real function f on the vertices v(G) such that v_iv_j ∈ e(G) for v_i ≠ v_j if and only if |f(v_i) ? f(v_j)| ≤ 1. A clique of a graph G is a maximal complete subgraph of G. The clique graph K(G) of a graph G is the intersection graph of the cliques of G. It will be shown that the clique graph of a time graph is a time graph, and that every time graph is the clique graph of some time graph. Denote the clique graph of a clique graph of G by K²(G), and inductively, denote K(K^m?1(G)) by K^m(G). Define the index indx(G) of a connected time graph G as the smallest integer n such that Kⁿ(G) is the trivial graph. It will be shown that the index of a time graph is equal to its diameter. Finally, bounds on the diameter of a time graph will be derived.     

On the strong p-Helly property

The notion of strong p-Helly hypergraphs was introduced by Golumbic and Jamison in 1985 [M.C. Golumbic, R.E. Jamison, The edge intersection graphs of paths in a tree, J. Combin. Theory Ser. B 38 (1985) 8-22]. Independently, other authors [A. Bretto, S. Ubéda, J. ?erovnik, A polynomial algorithm for the strong Helly property. Inform. Process. Lett. 81 (2002) 55-57, E. Prisner, Hereditary clique-Helly graphs, J. Combin. Math. Combin. Comput. 14 (1993) 216-220, W.D. Wallis, Guo-Hui Zhang, On maximal clique irreducible graphs. J. Combin. Math. Combin. Comput. 8 (1990) 187-193.] have also considered the strong Helly property in other contexts. In this paper, we characterize strong p-Helly hypergraphs. This characterization leads to an algorithm for recognizing such hypergraphs, which terminates within polynomial time whenever p is fixed. In contrast, we show that the recognition problem is co-NP-complete, for arbitrary p. Further, we apply the concept of strong p-Helly hypergraphs to the cliques of a graph, leading to the class of strong p-clique-Helly graphs. For p=2, this class is equivalent to that of hereditary clique-Helly graphs [E. Prisner, Hereditary clique-Helly graphs, J. Combin. Math. Combin. Comput. 14 (1993) 216-220]. We describe a characterization for this class and obtain an algorithm for recognizing such graphs. Again, the algorithm has polynomial-time complexity for p fixed, and we show the corresponding recognition problem to be NP-hard, for arbitrary p.