Bad news for chordal partitions

Reed and Seymour [1998] asked whether every graph has a partition into induced connected nonempty bipartite subgraphs such that the quotient graph is chordal. If true, this would have significant ramifications for Hadwiger's Conjecture. We prove that the answer is “no.” In fact, we show that the answer is still “no” for several relaxations of the question.     

Introducing subclasses of basic chordal graphs

Basic chordal graphs arose when comparing clique trees of chordal graphs and compatible trees of dually chordal graphs. They were defined as those chordal graphs whose clique trees are exactly the compatible trees of its clique graph.In this work, we consider some subclasses of basic chordal graphs, like hereditary basic chordal graphs, basic DV and basic RDV graphs, we characterize them and we find some other properties they have, mostly involving clique graphs.     

Intersection models of weakly chordal graphs

We first present new structural properties of a two-pair in various graphs. A two-pair is used in a well-known characterization of weakly chordal graphs. Based on these properties, we prove the main theorem: a graph G is a weakly chordal ()-free graph if and only if G is an edge intersection graph of subtrees on a tree with maximum degree 4. This characterizes the so called [4, 4, 2] graphs. The proof of the theorem constructively finds the representation. Thus, we obtain an algorithm to construct an edge intersection model of subtrees on a tree with maximum degree 4 for such a given graph. This is a recognition algorithm for [4, 4, 2] graphs.     

A new approach to chordal graphs

By a chordal graph is meant a graph with no induced cycle of length ⩾ 4. By a ternary system is meant an ordered pair (W, T), where W is a finite nonempty set, and T ⊆ W × W × W. Ternary systems satisfying certain axioms (A1)–(A5) are studied in this paper; note that these axioms can be formulated in a language of the first-order logic. For every finite nonempty set W, a bijective mapping from the set of all connected chordal graphs G with V(G) = W onto the set of all ternary systems (W, T) satisfying the axioms (A1)–(A5) is found in this paper.     

Independent domination in chordal graphs

A graph chordal if it does not contain any cycle of length greater than three as an induced subgraph. A set of S of vertices of a graph G = (V,E) is independent if not two vertices in S are adjacent, and is dominating if every vertex in V?S is adjacent to some vertex in S. We present a linear algorithm to locate a minimum weight independent dominating set in a chordal graph with 0–1 vertex weights.     

Locally connected spanning trees in strongly chordal graphs and proper circular-arc graphs

A locally connected spanning tree of a graph G is a spanning tree T of G such that the set of all neighbors of v in T induces a connected subgraph of G for every v∈V(G). The purpose of this paper is to give linear-time algorithms for finding locally connected spanning trees on strongly chordal graphs and proper circular-arc graphs, respectively.     

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.     

Vertex partitions of r-edge-colored graphs

Let G be an edge-colored graph.The monochromatic tree partition problem is to find the minimum number of vertex disjoint monochromatic trees to cover the all vertices of G.In the authors' previous work,it has been proved that the problem is NP-complete and there does not exist any constant factor approximation algorithm for it unless P=NP.In this paper the authors show that for any fixed integer r≥5,if the edges of a graph G are colored by r colors,called an r-edge-colored graph,the problem remains NP-complete.Similar result holds for the monochromatic path(cycle)partition problem.Therefore,to find some classes of interesting graphs for which the problem can be solved in polynomial time seems interesting. A linear time algorithm for the monochromatic path partition problem for edge-colored trees is given.     

Star partitions of graphs

Let G be a graph and n ≥ 2 an integer. We prove that the following are equivalent: (i) there is a partition (V₁,…,V_m) of V (G) such that each V_i induces one of stars K_1,1,…,K_1,n, and (ii) for every subset S of V(G), G\ S has at most n|S| components with the property that each of their blocks is an odd order complete graph. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Graph Theory 25: 185–190, 1997     

Total coloring of planar graphs without chordal 7-cycles

A k-total-coloring of a graph G is a coloring of vertices and edges of G using k colors such that no two adjacent or incident elements receive the same color.In this paper,it is proved that if G is a planar graph with Δ(G) ≥ 7 and without chordal 7-cycles,then G has a(Δ(G) + 1)-total-coloring.     

The clique-separator graph for chordal graphs

We present a new representation of a chordal graph called the clique-separator graph, whose nodes are the maximal cliques and minimal vertex separators of the graph. We present structural properties of the clique-separator graph and additional properties when the chordal graph is an interval graph, proper interval graph, or split graph. We also characterize proper interval graphs and split graphs in terms of the clique-separator graph. We present an algorithm that constructs the clique-separator graph of a chordal graph in O(n³) time and of an interval graph in O(n²) time, where n is the number of vertices in the graph.     

Polarity of chordal graphs

Polar graphs are a common generalization of bipartite, cobipartite, and split graphs. They are defined by the existence of a certain partition of vertices, which is NP-complete to decide for general graphs. It has been recently proved that for cographs, the existence of such a partition can be characterized by finitely many forbidden subgraphs, and hence tested in polynomial time. In this paper we address the question of polarity of chordal graphs, arguing that this is in essence a question of colourability, and hence chordal graphs are a natural restriction. We observe that there is no finite forbidden subgraph characterization of polarity in chordal graphs; nevertheless we present a polynomial time algorithm for polarity of chordal graphs. We focus on a special case of polarity (called monopolarity) which turns out to be the central concept for our algorithms. For the case of monopolar graphs, we illustrate the structure of all minimal obstructions; it turns out that they can all be described by a certain graph grammar, permitting our monopolarity algorithm to be cast as a certifying algorithm.     

Equitable partitions of Latin‐square graphs

We study equitable partitions of Latin‐square graphs and give a complete classification of those whose quotient matrix does not have an eigenvalue ?3.     

Vertex partitions of r -edge-colored graphs

Let G be an edge-colored graph. The monochromatic tree partition problem is to find the minimum number of vertex disjoint monochromatic trees to cover the all vertices of G. In the authors’ previous work, it has been proved that the problem is NP-complete and there does not exist any constant factor approximation algorithm for it unless P = NP. In this paper the authors show that for any fixed integer r ≥ 5, if the edges of a graph G are colored by r colors, called an r-edge-colored graph, the problem remains NP-complete. Similar result holds for the monochromatic path (cycle) partition problem. Therefore, to find some classes of interesting graphs for which the problem can be solved in polynomial time seems interesting. A linear time algorithm for the monochromatic path partition problem for edge-colored trees is given. Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, PCSIRT and the “973” Program.     

Cover-incomparability graphs and chordal graphs

The problem of recognizing cover-incomparability graphs (i.e. the graphs obtained from posets as the edge-union of their covering and incomparability graph) was shown to be NP-complete in general [J. Maxová, P. Pavlíkova, A. Turzík, On the complexity of cover-incomparability graphs of posets, Order 26 (2009) 229-236], while it is for instance clearly polynomial within trees. In this paper we concentrate on (classes of) chordal graphs, and show that any cover-incomparability graph that is a chordal graph is an interval graph. We characterize the posets whose cover-incomparability graph is a block graph, and a split graph, respectively, and also characterize the cover-incomparability graphs among block and split graphs, respectively. The latter characterizations yield linear time algorithms for the recognition of block and split graphs, respectively, that are cover-incomparability graphs.