Characterizing subgraphs of Hamming graphs

Cartesian products of complete graphs are known as Hamming graphs. Using embeddings into Cartesian products of quotient graphs we characterize subgraphs, induced subgraphs, and isometric subgraphs of Hamming graphs. For instance, a graph G is an induced subgraph of a Hamming graph if and only if there exists a labeling of E(G) fulfilling the following two conditions: (i) edges of a triangle receive the same label; (ii) for any vertices u and v at distance at least two, there exist two labels which both appear on any induced u, υ‐path. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Graph Theory 49: 302–312, 2005     

On Switching to H‐Free Graphs

In this article, we study the problem of deciding if, for a fixed graph H, a given graph is switching equivalent to an H‐free graph. Polynomial‐time algorithms are known for H having at most three vertices or isomorphic to P₄. We show that for H isomorphic to a claw, the problem is polynomial, too. On the other hand, we give infinitely many graphs H such that the problem is NP‐complete, thus solving an open problem [Kratochvíl, Ne?et?il and Zýka, Ann Discrete Math 51 (1992)]. Further, we give a characterization of graphs switching equivalent to a K_{1, 2}‐free graph by ten forbidden‐induced subgraphs, each having five vertices. We also give the forbidden‐induced subgraphs for graphs switching equivalent to a forest of bounded vertex degrees.     

Distance-Balanced Graphs

Distance-balanced graphs are introduced as graphs in which every edge uv has the following property The number of vertices closer to u than to v is equal to the number of vertices closer to v than to u. Basic properties of these graphs are obtained. The new concept is connected with symmetry conditions in graphs and local operations on graphs are studied with respect to it. Distance-balanced Cartesian and lexicographic products of graphs are also characterized. Several open problems are posed along the way. Received August 31, 2005     

A characterization of P4‐indifference graphs

A graph is a P₄‐indifference graph if it admits a linear ordering ≺ on its vertices such that every chordless path with vertices a, b, c, d and edges ab, bc, cd has either a ≺ b ≺ c ≺ d or d ≺ c ≺ b ≺ a. P₄‐indifference graphs generalize indifference graphs and are perfectly orderable. We give a characterization of P₄‐indifference graphs by forbidden induced subgraphs. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Graph Theory 31: 155‐162, 1999     

The superregular graphs

A regular graph is superregular if it has no vertices or if the subgraphs induced by the neighbors and by the nonneighbors of each vertex are superregular. The superregular graphs are precisely the disjoint union of m isomorphic cliques, the Cartesian product of two isomorphic cliques, the five-cycle, and the complements of these graphs. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

A Note on Disconnected Weakly k-Homogeneous Graphs

 A graph is weakly k-homogeneous if whenever two induced subgraphs on k vertices are isomorphic, then some automorphism of this graph sends one induced subgraph to the other. In this note, we characterize weakly k-homogeneous graphs with certain given number of isolated vertices and given number of nontrivial components. As byproduct, all disconnected weakly k-homogeneous graphs are determined for k=2 and k=3. Received: October, 2001 Final version received: October 9, 2002 Acknowledgment. The authors wish to thank the referee for his invaluable remarks.     

Matching signatures and Pfaffian graphs

Perfect matchings of k-Pfaffian graphs may be enumerated in polynomial time on the number of vertices, for fixed k. In general, this enumeration problem is #P-complete. We give a Composition Theorem of 2r-Pfaffian graphs from r Pfaffian spanning subgraphs. Constructions of k-Pfaffian graphs known prior to this seem to be of a very different and essentially topological nature. We apply our Composition Theorem to produce a bipartite graph on 10 vertices that is 6-Pfaffian but not 4-Pfaffian. This is a counter-example to a conjecture of Norine (2009) [8], which states that the Pfaffian number of a graph is a power of four.     

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 any of the following classes: P₄ ‐free graphs, paw‐free graphs, claw‐free chordal graphs and diamond‐free graphs. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Graph Theory 61: 289–306, 2009     

Partial characterizations of clique-perfect graphs I: Subclasses of claw-free 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. The clique-transversal number and clique-independence number of G are the sizes of a minimum clique-transversal and a maximum clique-independent set of G, respectively. A graph G is clique-perfect if these two numbers 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. In this paper, we present a partial result in this direction; that is, we characterize clique-perfect graphs by a restricted list of forbidden induced subgraphs when the graph belongs to two different subclasses of claw-free graphs.     

Half-Transitive Graphs of Prime-Cube Order

We call an undirected graph X half-transitive if the automorphism group Aut X of X acts transitively on the vertex set and edge set but not on the set of ordered pairs of adjacent vertices of X. In this paper we determine all half-transitive graphs of order p ³ and degree 4, where p is an odd prime; namely, we prove that all such graphs are Cayley graphs on the non-Abelian group of order p ³ and exponent p ², and up to isomorphism there are exactly (p – 1)/2 such graphs. As a byproduct, this proves the uniqueness of Holt's half-transitive graph with 27 vertices.     

Hereditary Efficiently Dominatable Graphs

An efficient dominating set (or perfect code) in a graph is a set of vertices the closed neighborhoods of which partition the graph's vertex set. We introduce graphs that are hereditary efficiently dominatable in that sense that every induced subgraph of the graph contains an efficient dominating set. We prove a decomposition theorem for (bull, fork, C₄)‐free graphs, based on which we characterize, in terms of forbidden induced subgraphs, the class of hereditary efficiently dominatable graphs. We also give a decomposition theorem for hereditary efficiently dominatable graphs and examine some algorithmic aspects of such graphs. In particular, we give a polynomial time algorithm for finding an efficient dominating set (if one exists) in a class of graphs properly containing the class of hereditary efficiently dominatable graphs by reducing the problem to the maximum weight independent set problem in claw‐free graphs.     

The Reverse H‐free Process for Strictly 2‐Balanced Graphs

Consider the random graph process that starts from the complete graph on n vertices. In every step, the process selects an edge uniformly at random from the set of edges that are in a copy of a fixed graph H and removes it from the graph. The process stops when no more copies of H exist. When H is a strictly 2‐balanced graph we give the exact asymptotics on the number of edges remaining in the graph when the process terminates and investigate some basic properties namely the size of the maximal independent set and the presence of subgraphs.     

Path-Bicolorable Graphs

In this paper, we introduce the notion of path-bicolorability that generalizes bipartite graphs in a natural way: For k ≥ 2, a graph G = (V, E) is P _k -bicolorable if its vertex set V can be partitioned into two subsets (i.e., color classes) V ₁ and V ₂ such that for every induced P _k (a path with exactly k − 1 edges and k vertices) in G, the two colors alternate along the P _k , i.e., no two consecutive vertices of the P _k belong to the same color class V _i , i = 1, 2. Obviously, a graph is bipartite if and only if it is P ₂-bicolorable. We give a structural characterization of P ₃-bicolorable graphs which also implies linear time recognition of these graphs. Moreover, we give a characterization of P ₄-bicolorable graphs in terms of forbidden subgraphs.     

Universal graphs and induced-universal graphs

We construct graphs that contain all bounded-degree trees on n vertices as induced subgraphs and have only cn edges for some constant c depending only on the maximum degree. In general, we consider the problem of determining the graphs, so-called universal graphs (or induced-universal graphs), with as few vertices and edges as possible having the property that all graphs in a specified family are contained as subgraphs (or induced subgraphs). We obtain bounds for the size of universal and induced-universal graphs for many classes of graphs such as trees and planar graphs. These bounds are obtained by establishing relationships between the universal graphs and the induced-universal graphs.     

Recognizing Planar Strict Quasi-Parity Graphs

 A graph is a strict-quasi parity (SQP) graph if every induced subgraph that is not a clique contains a pair of vertices with no odd chordless path between them (an “even pair”). We present an O(n ³) algorithm for recognizing planar strict quasi-parity graphs, based on Wen-Lian Hsu's decomposition of planar (perfect) graphs and on the (non-algorithmic) characterization of planar minimal non-SQP graphs given in [9]. Received: September 21, 1998 Final version received: May 9, 2000     

A Class of Three‐Colorable Triangle‐Free Graphs

The chromatic number of a triangle‐free graph can be arbitrarily large. In this article, we show that if all subdivisions of K_{2, 3} are also excluded as induced subgraphs, then the chromatic number becomes bounded by 3. We give a structural characterization of this class of graphs, from which we derive an coloring algorithm, where n denotes the number of vertices and m the number of edges of the input graph.     

Chaotic Numbers of Complete Bipartite Graphs and Tripartite Graphs

In this paper, we study the chaotic numbers of complete bipartite graphs and complete tripartite graphs. For the complete bipartite graphs, we find closed-form formulas of the chaotic numbers and characterize all chaotic mappings. For the complete tripartite graphs, we develop an algorithm running in O(n ⁴ ₃) time to find the chaotic numbers, with n ₃ the number of vertices in the largest partite set.Research supported by NSC 90-2115-M-036-003.The author thanks the authors of Ref. 6, since his work was motivated by their work. Also, the author thanks the referees for helpful comments which made the paper more readable.     

On the number of maximal bipartite subgraphs of a graph

We show new lower and upper bounds on the maximum number of maximal induced bipartite subgraphs of graphs with n vertices. We present an infinite family of graphs having 105^n/10 ≈ 1.5926ⁿ; such subgraphs show an upper bound of O(12^n/4) = O(1.8613ⁿ) and give an algorithm that finds all maximal induced bipartite subgraphs in time within a polynomial factor of this bound. This algorithm is used in the construction of algorithms for checking k‐colorability of a graph. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Graph Theory 48: 127–132, 2005     

Matching graphs

The matching graph M(G) of a graph G is that graph whose vertices are the maximum matchings in G and where two vertices M₁ and M₂ of M(G) are adjacent if and only if |M₁ − M₂| = 1. When M(G) is connected, this graph models a metric space whose metric is defined on the set of maximum matchings in G. Which graphs are matching graphs of some graph is not known in general. We determine several forbidden induced subgraphs of matching graphs and add even cycles to the list of known matching graphs. In another direction, we study the behavior of sequences of iterated matching graphs. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J. Graph Theory 29: 73–86, 1998     

Characterizing planarity using theta graphs

A theta graph is a homeomorph of K_2,3. In an embedded planar graph the local rotation at one degree-three vertex of a theta graph determines the local rotation at the other degree-three vertex. Using this observation, we give a characterization of planar graphs in terms of balance in an associated signed graph whose vertices are K_1,3 subgraphs and whose edges correspond to theta graphs. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Graph Theory 27: 17–20, 1998