Approximating the minimum clique cover and other hard problems in subtree filament graphs

Subtree filament graphs are the intersection graphs of subtree filaments in a tree. This class of graphs contains subtree overlap graphs, interval filament graphs, chordal graphs, circle graphs, circular-arc graphs, cocomparability graphs, and polygon-circle graphs. In this paper we show that, for circle graphs, the clique cover problem is NP-complete and the h-clique cover problem for fixed h is solvable in polynomial time. We then present a general scheme for developing approximation algorithms for subtree filament graphs, and give approximation algorithms developed from the scheme for the following problems which are NP-complete on circle graphs and therefore on subtree filament graphs: clique cover, vertex colouring, maximum k-colourable subgraph, and maximum h-coverable subgraph.     

Note on 3-choosability of planar graphs with maximum degree 4

Deciding whether a planar graph (even of maximum degree 4) is 3-colorable is NP-complete. Determining subclasses of planar graphs being 3-colorable has a long history, but since Grötzsch’s result that triangle-free planar graphs are such, most of the effort was focused to solving Havel’s and Steinberg’s conjectures. In this paper, we prove that every planar graph obtained as a subgraph of the medial graph of any bipartite plane graph is 3-choosable. These graphs are allowed to have close triangles (even incident), and have no short cycles forbidden, hence representing an entirely different class than the graphs inferred by the above mentioned conjectures.     

无向路图和块图上的混合控制

图G=(V,E)的一个混合控制集是一个满足如下条件的集合DV∪E:不在D中的每个点或每条边都相邻或关联于D中的至少一个点或一条边.确定图的最小基数的混合控制集的问题称为混合控制问题.本文研究混合控制问题的算法复杂性,证明了混合控制问题在无向路图上是NP-完全的,但在块图上有线性时间算法.无向路图和块图都是弦图的子类,又是树的母类.     

Exploring the complexity boundary between coloring and?list-coloring

Many classes of graphs where the vertex coloring problem is polynomially solvable are known, the most prominent being the class of perfect graphs. However, the list-coloring problem is NP-complete for many subclasses of perfect graphs. In this work we explore the complexity boundary between vertex coloring and list-coloring on such subclasses of perfect graphs where the former admits polynomial-time algorithms but the latter is NP-complete. Our goal is to analyze the computational complexity of coloring problems lying “between” (from a computational complexity viewpoint) these two problems: precoloring extension, μ-coloring, and (γ,μ)-coloring. Flavia Bonomo partially supported by UBACyT Grants X606 and X069 (Argentina), and CNPq under PROSUL project Proc. 490333/2004-4 (Brazil). Guillermo Durán partially supported by FONDECyT Grant 1080286 and Millennium Science Institute “Complex Engineering Systems” (Chile), and CNPq under PROSUL project Proc. 490333/2004-4 (Brazil). Javier Marenco partially supported by UBACyT Grant X069 (Argentina), and CNPq under PROSUL project Proc. 490333/2004-4 (Brazil).     

Partitions of Graphs into Cographs

Cographs from the minimal family of graphs containing K₁ which are closed with respect to complements and unions. We discuss vertex partitions of graphs into the smallest number of cographs, where the partition is as small as possible. We shall call the order of such a partition the c-chromatic number of the graph. We begin by axiomatizing several well-known graphical parameters as motivation for this function. We present several bounds on c-chromatic number in terms of well-known expressions. We show that if a graph is triangle-free, then its chromatic number is bounded between the c-chromatic number and twice this number. We show both bounds are sharp, for graphs with arbitrarily high girth. This provides an alternative proof to a result in [3]; there exist triangle-free graphs with arbitrarily large c-chromatic numbers. We show that any planar graph with girth at least 11 has a c-chromatic number of at most two. We close with several remarks on computational complexity. In particular, we show that computing the c-chromatic number is NP-complete for planar graphs.     

On Generating Triangle-Free Graphs

We show that the problem to decide whether a graph can be made triangle-free with at most k edge deletions remains NP-complete even when restricted to planar graphs of maximum degree seven. In addition, we provide polynomial-time data reduction rules for this problem and obtain problem kernels consisting of 6k vertices for general graphs and 11k/3 vertices for planar graphs.     

The Hamiltonian connectivity of rectangular supergrid graphs

A Hamiltonian path of a graph is a simple path which visits each vertex of the graph exactly once. The Hamiltonian path problem is to determine whether a graph contains a Hamiltonian path. A graph is called Hamiltonian connected if there exists a Hamiltonian path between any two distinct vertices. In this paper, we will study the Hamiltonian connectivity of rectangular supergrid graphs. Supergrid graphs were first introduced by us and include grid graphs and triangular grid graphs as subgraphs. The Hamiltonian path problem for grid graphs and triangular grid graphs was known to be NP-complete. Recently, we have proved that the Hamiltonian path problem for supergrid graphs is also NP-complete. The Hamiltonian paths on supergrid graphs can be applied to compute the stitching traces of computer sewing machines. Rectangular supergrid graphs form a popular subclass of supergrid graphs, and they have strong structure. In this paper, we provide a constructive proof to show that rectangular supergrid graphs are Hamiltonian connected except one trivial forbidden condition. Based on the constructive proof, we present a linear-time algorithm to construct a longest path between any two given vertices in a rectangular supergrid graph.     

TWO FEEDBACK PROBLEMS FOR GRAPHS WITH BOUNDED TREE-WIDTH

Many difficult (often NP-complete) optimization problems can be solved efficiently on graphs of small tree-width with a given tree decomposition. In this paper,it is discussed how to solve the minimum feedback vertex set problem and the minimum vertex feedback edge set problem efficiently by using dynamic programming on a tree-decomposition.     

Solving Partition Problems with Colour-Bipartitions

Polar, monopolar, and unipolar graphs are defined in terms of the existence of certain vertex partitions. Although it is polynomial to determine whether a graph is unipolar and to find whenever possible a unipolar partition, the problems of recognizing polar and monopolar graphs are both NP-complete in general. These problems have recently been studied for chordal, claw-free, and permutation graphs. Polynomial time algorithms have been found for solving the problems for these classes of graphs, with one exception: polarity recognition remains NP-complete in claw-free graphs. In this paper, we connect these problems to edge-coloured homomorphism problems. We show that finding unipolar partitions in general and finding monopolar partitions for certain classes of graphs can be efficiently reduced to a polynomial-time solvable 2-edge-coloured homomorphism problem, which we call the colour-bipartition problem. This approach unifies the currently known results on monopolarity and extends them to new classes of graphs.     

Partitions of graphs into cographs

Cographs form the minimal family of graphs containing K₁ that is closed with respect to complementation and disjoint union. We discuss vertex partitions of graphs into the smallest number of cographs. We introduce a new parameter, calling the minimum order of such a partition the c-chromatic number of the graph. We begin by axiomatizing several well-known graphical parameters as motivation for this function. We present several bounds on c-chromatic number in terms of well-known expressions. We show that if a graph is triangle-free, then its chromatic number is bounded between the c-chromatic number and twice this number. We show that both bounds are sharp for graphs with arbitrarily high girth. This provides an alternative proof to a result by Broere and Mynhardt; namely, there exist triangle-free graphs with arbitrarily large c-chromatic numbers. We show that any planar graph with girth at least 11 has a c-chromatic number at most two. We close with several remarks on computational complexity. In particular, we show that computing the c-chromatic number is NP-complete for planar graphs.     

Edge and vertex intersection of paths in a tree

In this paper we continue the investigation of the class of edge intersection graphs of a collection of paths in a tree (EPT graphs) where two paths edge intersect if they share an edge. The class of EPT graphs differs from the class known as path graphs, the latter being the class of vertex intersection graphs of paths in a tree. A characterization is presented here showing when a path graph is an EPT graph. In particular, the classes of path graphs and EPT graphs coincide on trees all of whose vertices have degree at most 3. We then prove that it is an NP-complete problem to recognize whether a graph is an EPT graph.     

The harmonious coloring problem is NP-complete for interval and permutation graphs

In this paper, we prove that the harmonious coloring problem is NP-complete for connected interval and permutation graphs. Given a simple graph G, a harmonious coloring of G is a proper vertex coloring such that each pair of colors appears together on at most one edge. The harmonious chromatic number is the least integer k for which G admits a harmonious coloring with k colors. Extending previous work on the NP-completeness of the harmonious coloring problem when restricted to the class of disconnected graphs which are simultaneously cographs and interval graphs, we prove that the problem is also NP-complete for connected interval and permutation graphs.     

Partial characterizations of clique-perfect and coordinated graphs: superclasses of triangle-free graphs

A graph is clique-perfect if the cardinality of a maximum clique-independent set equals the cardinality of a minimum clique-transversal, for all its induced subgraphs. A graph G is coordinated if the chromatic number of the clique graph of H equals the maximum number of cliques of H with a common vertex, for every induced subgraph H of G. Coordinated graphs are a subclass of perfect graphs. The complete lists of minimal forbidden induced subgraphs for the classes of cliqueperfect and coordinated graphs are not known, but some partial characterizations have been obtained. In this paper, we characterize clique-perfect and coordinated graphs by minimal forbidden induced subgraphs when the graph is either paw-free or {gem,W₄,bull}-free, two superclasses of triangle-free graphs.     

Symmetry Groups of Coloured Graphs

A perfect colouring Φ of a simple undirected connected graph G is an edge colouring such that each vertex is incident with exactly one edge of each colour. This paper concerns the problem of representing groups by graphs with perfect colourings. We define groups of graph automorphisms, which preserve the structure of the colouring, and characterize these groups up to isomorphism. Our considerations are based on the fact that every perfectly coloured graph is isomorphic to a Schreier coset graph on a group generated by involutions.     

Chordal bipartite completion of colored graphs

Golumbic, Kaplan, and Shamir [Graph sandwich problems, J. Algorithms 19 (1995) 449-473], in their paper on graph sandwich problems published in 1995, left the status of the sandwich problems for strongly chordal graphs and chordal bipartite graphs open. It was recently shown [C.M.H. de Figueiredo, L. Faria, S. Klein, R. Sritharan, On the complexity of the sandwich problems for strongly chordal graphs and chordal bipartite graphs, Theoret. Comput. Sci., accepted for publication] that the sandwich problem for strongly chordal graphs is NP-complete. We show that given graph G with a proper vertex coloring c, determining whether there is a supergraph of G that is chordal bipartite and also is properly colored by c is NP-complete. This implies that the sandwich problem for chordal bipartite graphs is also NP-complete.     

Halin图的点着色算法

本文解决了Halin图的点色数问题,并给出了一个可在线性时间内对Halin图进行点着色的算法。     

The Exact Weighted Independent Set Problem in Perfect Graphs and Related Classes

The exact weighted independent set (EWIS) problem consists in determining whether a given vertex-weighted graph contains an independent set of given weight. This problem is a generalization of two well-known problems, the NP-complete subset sum problem and the strongly NP-hard maximum weight independent set (MWIS) problem. Since the MWIS problem is polynomially solvable for some special graph classes, it is interesting to determine the complexity of this more general EWIS problem for such graph classes.We focus on the class of perfect graphs, which is one of the most general graph classes where the MWIS problem can be solved in polynomial time. It turns out that for certain subclasses of perfect graphs, the EWIS problem is solvable in pseudo-polynomial time, while on some others it remains strongly NP-complete. In particular, we show that the EWIS problem is strongly NP-complete for bipartite graphs of maximum degree three, but solvable in pseudo-polynomial time for cographs, interval graphs and chordal graphs, as well as for some other related graph classes.     

Weighted domination of cocomparability graphs

It is shown in this paper that the weighted domination problem and its three variants, the weighted connected domination, total domination, and dominating clique problems are NP-complete on cobipartite graphs when arbitrary integer vertex weights are allowed and all of them can be solved in polynomial time on cocomparability graphs if vertex weights are integers and less than or equal to a constant c. The results are interesting because cocomparability graphs properly contain cobipartite graphs and the cardinality cases of the above problems are trivial on cobipartite graphs. On the other hand, an O(¦V¦²) algorithm is given for the weighted independent perfect domination problem of a cocomparability graph G = (V.E).     

On coloring problems with local constraints

We show complexity results for some generalizations of the graph coloring problem on two classes of perfect graphs, namely clique trees and unit interval graphs. We deal with the μ-coloring problem (upper bounds for the color on each vertex), the precoloring extension problem (a subset of vertices colored beforehand), and a problem generalizing both of them, the (γ, μ)-coloring problem (lower and upper bounds for the color on each vertex). We characterize the complexity of all those problems on clique trees of different heights, providing polytime algorithms for the cases that are easy. These results have two interesting corollaries: first, one can observe on clique trees of different heights the increasing complexity of the chain k-coloring, μ-coloring, (γ, μ)-coloring, list-coloring. Second, clique trees of height 2 are the first known example of a class of graphs where μ-coloring is polynomial time solvable and precoloring extension is NP-complete, thus being at the same time the first example where μ-coloring is polynomially solvable and (γ, μ)-coloring is NP-complete. Last, we show that the μ-coloring problem on unit interval graphs is NP-complete. These results answer three questions from [Ann. Oper. Res. 169(1) (2009), 3–16].     

Intersection graphs of paths in a tree

The intersection graph for a family of sets is obtained by associating each set with a vertex of the graph and joining two vertices by an edge exactly when their corresponding sets have a nonempty intersection. Intersection graphs arise naturally in many contexts, such as scheduling conflicting events, and have been widely studied.We present a unified framework for studying several classes of intersection graphs arising from families of paths in a tree. Four distinct classes of graphs arise by considering paths to be the sets of vertices or the edges making up the path, and by allowing the underlying tree to be undirected or directed; in the latter case only directed paths are allowed. Two further classes are obtained by requiring the directed tree to be rooted. We introduce other classes of graphs as well. The rooted directed vertex path graphs have been studied by Gavril; the vertex path graphs have been studied by Gavril and Renz; the edge path graphs have been studied by Golumbic and Jamison, Lobb, Syslo, and Tarjan.The main results are a characterization of these graphs in terms of their “clique tree” representations and a unified recognition algorithm. The algorithm repeatedly separates an arbitrary graph by a (maximal) clique separator, checks the form of the resultant nondecomposable “atoms,” and finally checks that each separation step is valid. In all cases, the first two steps can be performed in polynomial time. In all but one case, the final step is based on a certain two-coloring condition and so can be done efficiently; in the other case the recognition problem can be shown to be NP-complete since a certain three-coloring condition is needed.The strength of this unified approach is that it clarifies and unifies virtually all of the important known results for these graphs and provides substantial new results as well. For example, the exact intersecting relationships among these graphs, and between these graphs and chordal and perfect graphs fall out easily as corollaries. A number of other results, such as bounds on the number of (maximal) cliques, related optimization problems on these graphs, etc., are presented along with open problems.