We study the complexity of Maximum Clique in intersection graphs of convex objects in the plane. On the algorithmic side, we extend the polynomial-time algorithm for unit disks [Clark '90, Raghavan and Spinrad '03] to translates of any fixed convex set. We also generalize the efficient polynomial-time approximation scheme (EPTAS) and subexponential algorithm for disks [Bonnet et al. '18, Bonamy et al. '18] to homothets of a fixed centrally symmetric convex set. The main open question on that topic is the complexity of Maximum Clique in disk graphs. It is not known whether this problem is NP-hard. We observe that, so far, all the hardness proofs for Maximum Clique in intersection graph classes $\mathcal I$ follow the same road. They show that, for every graph $G$ of a large-enough class $\mathcal C$, the complement of an even subdivision of $G$ belongs to the intersection class $\mathcal I$. Then they conclude invoking the hardness of Maximum Independent Set on the class $\mathcal C$, and the fact that the even subdivision preserves that hardness. However there is a strong evidence that this approach cannot work for disk graphs [Bonnet et al. '18]. We suggest a new approach, based on a problem that we dub Max Interval Permutation Avoidance, which we prove unlikely to have a subexponential-time approximation scheme. We transfer that hardness to Maximum Clique in intersection graphs of objects which can be either half-planes (or unit disks) or axis-parallel rectangles. That problem is not amenable to the previous approach. We hope that a scaled down (merely NP-hard) variant of Max Interval Permutation Avoidance could help making progress on the disk case, for instance by showing the NP-hardness for (convex) pseudo-disks.
Ray intersection graphs are intersection graphs of rays, or halflines, in the plane. We show that any planar graph has an even subdivision whose complement is a ray intersection graph. The construction can be done in polynomial time and implies that finding a maximum clique in a segment intersection graph is NP-hard. This solves a 21-year old open problem posed by Kratochvíl and Nešetřil.
A (unit) disk graph is the intersection graph of closed (unit) disks in the plane. Almost three decades ago, an elegant polynomial-time algorithm was found for \textsc{Maximum Clique} on unit disk graphs [Clark, Colbourn, Johnson; Discrete Mathematics '90]. Since then, it has been an intriguing open question whether or not tractability can be extended to general disk graphs. We show that the disjoint union of two odd cycles is never the complement of a disk graph nor of a unit (3-dimensional) ball graph. From that fact and existing results, we derive a simple QPTAS and a subexponential algorit…
Let $F$ be a set of $n$ objects in the plane and let $G(F)$ be its intersection graph. A balanced clique-based separator of $G(F)$ is a set $S$ consisting of cliques whose removal partitions $G(F)$ into components of size at most $δn$, for some fixed constant $δ<1$. The weight of a clique-based separator is defined as $\sum_{C\in S}\log (|C|+1)$. Recently De Berg et al. (SICOMP 2020) proved that if $S$ consists of convex fat objects, then $G(F)$ admits a balanced clique-based separator of weight $O(\sqrt{n})$. We extend this result in several directions, obtaining the following results. Map gr…
The minimum clique partition (MCP) problem is that of partitioning the vertex set of a given graph into a minimum number of cliques. Given $n$ points in the plane, the corresponding unit disk graph (UDG) has these points as vertices, and edges connecting points at distance at most~1. MCP in unit disk graphs is known to be NP-hard and several constant factor approximations are known, including a recent PTAS. We present two improved approximation algorithms for minimum clique partition in unit disk graphs: (I) A polynomial time approximation scheme (PTAS) running in time $n^{O(1/\eps^2)}$. This …
A (unit) disk graph is the intersection graph of closed (unit) disks in the plane. Almost three decades ago, an elegant polynomial-time algorithm was found for \textsc{Maximum Clique} on unit disk graphs [Clark, Colbourn, Johnson; Discrete Mathematics '90]. Since then, it has been an intriguing open question whether or not tractability can be extended to general disk graphs. We show the rather surprising structural result that a disjoint union of cycles is the complement of a disk graph if and only if at most one of those cycles is of odd length. From that, we derive the first QPTAS and subexp…
In the 90's Clark, Colbourn and Johnson wrote a seminal paper where they proved that maximum clique can be solved in polynomial time in unit disk graphs. Since then, the complexity of maximum clique in intersection graphs of d-dimensional (unit) balls has been investigated. For ball graphs, the problem is NP-hard, as shown by Bonamy et al. (FOCS '18). They also gave an efficient polynomial time approximation scheme (EPTAS) for disk graphs. However, the complexity of maximum clique in this setting remains unknown. In this paper, we show the existence of a polynomial time algorithm for a geometr…
We consider problems related to finding short cycles, small cliques, small independent sets, and small subgraphs in geometric intersection graphs. We obtain a plethora of new results. For example: * For the intersection graph of $n$ line segments in the plane, we give algorithms to find a 3-cycle in $O(n^{1.408})$ time, a size-3 independent set in $O(n^{1.652})$ time, a 4-clique in near-$O(n^{24/13})$ time, and a $k$-clique (or any $k$-vertex induced subgraph) in $O(n^{0.565k+O(1)})$ time for any constant $k$; we can also compute the girth in near-$O(n^{3/2})$ time. * For the intersection grap…
A disk graph is an intersection graph of disks in the Euclidean plane, where the disks correspond to the vertices of the graph and a pair of vertices are adjacent if and only if their corresponding disks intersect. The problem of determining the time complexity of computing a maximum clique in a disk graph is a long-standing open question. The problem is known to be open even when the radii of all the disks are in the interval $[1,(1+\varepsilon)]$, where $\varepsilon>0$. However, the maximum clique problem is known to be APX-hard for the intersection graphs of many other convex objects such a…
We propose a polynomial-time algorithm which takes as input a finite set of points of $\mathbb R^3$ and compute, up to arbitrary precision, a maximum subset with diameter at most $1$. More precisely, we give the first randomized EPTAS and deterministic PTAS for Maximum Clique in unit ball graphs. Our approximation algorithm also works on disk graphs with arbitrary radii. Almost three decades ago, an elegant polynomial-time algorithm was found for Maximum Clique on unit disk graphs [Clark, Colbourn, Johnson; Discrete Mathematics '90]. Since then, it has been an intriguing open question whether …
We consider drawings of graphs that contain dense subgraphs. We introduce intersection-link representations for such graphs, in which each vertex $u$ is represented by a geometric object $R(u)$ and in which each edge $(u,v)$ is represented by the intersection between $R(u)$ and $R(v)$ if it belongs to a dense subgraph or by a curve connecting the boundaries of $R(u)$ and $R(v)$ otherwise. We study a notion of planarity, called Clique Planarity, for intersection-link representations of graphs in which the dense subgraphs are cliques.
A grounded 1-bend string graph is an intersection graph of a set of polygonal lines, each with one bend, such that the lines lie above a common horizontal line $\ell$ and have exactly one endpoint on $\ell$. We show that the problem of finding a maximum clique in a grounded 1-bend string graph is APX-hard, even for strictly $y$-monotone strings. For general 1-bend strings, the problem remains APX-hard even if we restrict the position of the bends and end-points to lie on at most three parallel horizontal lines. We give fast algorithms to compute a maximum clique for different subclasses of gro…
Near-Linear and Parameterized Approximations for Maximum Cliques in Disk Graphs
Rutgers University（罗格斯大学）；University of Wrocław（弗罗茨瓦夫大学）；City St George’s, University of London（伦敦大学圣乔治学院）；Freie Universität Berlin（柏林自由大学）；Aalto University（阿尔托大学）；Utrecht University（乌得勒支大学）；Ben Gurion University of the Negev（内盖夫本古里安大学）
We consider the problem of partitioning the set of vertices of a given unit disk graph (UDG) into a minimum number of cliques. The problem is NP-hard and various constant factor approximations are known, with the current best ratio of 3. Our main result is a {\em weakly robust} polynomial time approximation scheme (PTAS) for UDGs expressed with edge-lengths, it either (i) computes a clique partition or (ii) gives a certificate that the graph is not a UDG; for the case (i) that it computes a clique partition, we show that it is guaranteed to be within $(1+\eps)$ ratio of the optimum if the inpu…
In the 1970s, Erdos asked whether the chromatic number of intersection graphs of line segments in the plane is bounded by a function of their clique number. We show the answer is no. Specifically, for each positive integer $k$, we construct a triangle-free family of line segments in the plane with chromatic number greater than $k$. Our construction disproves a conjecture of Scott that graphs excluding induced subdivisions of any fixed graph have chromatic number bounded by a function of their clique number.
In this paper, we show that any $B_2$-VPG graph (i.e., an intersection graph of orthogonal curves with at most 2 bends) can be decomposed into $O(\log n)$ outerstring graphs or $O(\log^3 n)$ permutation graphs. This leads to better approximation algorithms for hereditary graph problems, such as independent set, clique and clique cover, on $B_2$-VPG graphs.
Intersection graphs of planar geometric objects such as intervals, disks, rectangles and pseudo-disks are well studied. Motivated by various applications, Butman et al. in SODA 2007 considered algorithmic questions in intersection graphs of $t$-intervals. A $t$-interval is a union of at most $t$ distinct intervals (here $t$ is a parameter) -- these graphs are referred to as Multiple-Interval Graphs. Subsequent work by Kammer et al. in Approx 2010 also considered $t$-disks and other geometric shapes. In this paper we revisit some of these algorithmic questions via more recent developments in co…
A class of graphs G is chi-bounded if the chromatic number of the graphs in G is bounded by some function of their clique number. We show that the class of intersection graphs of simple x-monotone curves in the plane intersecting a vertical line is chi-bounded. As a corollary we show that the class of intersection graphs of rays in the plane is chi-bounded, and the class of intersection graphs of unit segments in the plane is chi-bounded
A universal representation theorem is derived that shows any graph is the intersection graph of one chordal graph, a number of co-bipartite graphs, and one unit interval graph. Central to the the result is the notion of the clique cover width which is a generalization of the bandwidth parameter. Specifically, we show that any planar graph is the intersection graph of one chordal graph, four co-bipartite graphs, and one unit interval graph. Equivalently, any planar graph is the intersection graph of a chordal graph and a graph that has {clique cover width} of at most seven. We further describe …
Given a convex polygon of $n$ sides, one can draw $n$ disks (called side disks) where each disk has a different side of the polygon as diameter and the midpoint of the side as its center. The intersection graph of such disks is the undirected graph with vertices the $n$ disks and two disks are adjacent if and only if they have a point in common. We prove that for every convex polygon this graph is planar. Particularly, for $n=5$, this shows that for any convex pentagon there are two disks among the five side disks that do not intersect, which means that $K_5$ is never the intersection graph of…
Let $G$ be a unit disk graph in the plane defined by $n$ disks whose positions are known. For the case when $G$ is unweighted, we give a simple algorithm to compute a shortest path tree from a given source in $O(n\log n)$ time. For the case when $G$ is weighted, we show that a shortest path tree from a given source can be computed in $O(n^{1+\varepsilon})$ time, improving the previous best time bound of $O(n^{4/3+\varepsilon})$.
The main goal of this paper is to formalize and explore a connection between chromatic properties of graphs with geometric representations and competitive analysis of on-line algorithms, which became apparent after the recent construction of triangle-free geometric intersection graphs with arbitrarily large chromatic number due to Pawlik et al. We show that on-line graph coloring problems give rise to classes of game graphs with a natural geometric interpretation. We use this concept to estimate the chromatic number of graphs with geometric representations by finding, for appropriate simpler g…
We study the maximum geometric independent set and clique problems in the streaming model. Given a collection of geometric objects arriving in an insertion only stream, the aim is to find a subset such that all objects in the subset are pairwise disjoint or intersect respectively. We show that no constant factor approximation algorithm exists to find a maximum set of independent segments or $2$-intervals without using a linear number of bits. Interestingly, our proof only requires a set of segments whose intersection graph is also an interval graph. This reveals an interesting discrepancy betw…
We prove that the intersection hypergraph of a family of $n$ pseudo-disks with respect to another family of pseudo-disks admits a proper coloring with $4$ colors and a conflict-free coloring with $O(\log n)$ colors. Along the way we prove that the respective Delaunay-graph is planar. We also prove that the intersection hypergraph of a family of $n$ regions with linear union complexity with respect to a family of pseudo-disks admits a proper coloring with constantly many colors and a conflict-free coloring with $O(\log n)$ colors. Our results serve as a common generalization and strengthening o…
A family of sets in the plane is simple if the intersection of its any subfamily is arc-connected, and it is pierced by a line $L$ if the intersection of its any member with $L$ is a nonempty segment. It is proved that the intersection graphs of simple families of compact arc-connected sets in the plane pierced by a common line have chromatic number bounded by a function of their clique number.
We consider matchings with diametral disks between two sets of points R and B. More precisely, for each pair of matched points p in R and q in B, we consider the disk through p and q with the smallest diameter. We prove that for any R and B such that |R|=|B|, there exists a perfect matching such that the diametral disks of the matched point pairs have a common intersection. In fact, our result is stronger, and shows that a maximum weight perfect matching has this property.
The intersection graph induced by a set $\Disks$ of $n$ disks can be dense. It is thus natural to try and sparsify it, while preserving connectivity. Unfortunately, sparse graphs can always be made disconnected by removing a small number of vertices. In this work, we present a sparsification algorithm that maintains connectivity between two disks in the computed graph, if the original graph remains ``well-connected'' even after removing an arbitrary ``attack'' set $\BSet \subseteq \Disks$ from both graphs. Thus, the new sparse graph has similar reliability to the original disk graph, and can w…
We present a $(1- \varepsilon)$-approximation algorithms for maximum cardinality matchings in disk intersection graphs -- all with near linear running time. We also present estimation algorithm that returns $(1\pm \varepsilon)$-approximation to the size of such matchings -- this algorithms run in linear time for unit disks, and $O(n \log n)$ for general disks (as long as the density is relatively small).
Given a convex $n$-gon, we can draw $n$ disks (called side disks) where each disk has a different side of the polygon as diameter and the midpoint of the side as its center. The intersection graph of such disks is the undirected graph with vertices the $n$ disks and two disks are adjacent if and only if they have a point in common. Such a graph was introduced by Huemer and Pérez-Lantero in 2016, proved to be planar and Hamiltonian. In this paper we study further combinatorial properties of this graph. We prove that the treewidth is at most 3, by showing an $O(n)$-time algorithm that builds a t…
A {\em string graph} is the intersection graph of a family of continuous arcs in the plane. The intersection graph of a family of plane convex sets is a string graph, but not all string graphs can be obtained in this way. We prove the following structure theorem conjectured by Janson and Uzzell: The vertex set of {\em almost all} string graphs on $n$ vertices can be partitioned into {\em five} cliques such that some pair of them is not connected by any edge ($n\rightarrow\infty$). We also show that every graph with the above property is an intersection graph of plane convex sets. As a corollar…
Given a set ${\cal R}=\{R_1,R_2,..., R_n\}$ of $n$ randomly positioned axis parallel rectangles in 2D, the problem of computing the minimum clique cover (MCC) and maximum independent set (MIS) for the intersection graph $G({\cal R})$ of the members in $\cal R$ are both computationally hard \cite{CC05}. For the MCC problem, it is proved that polynomial time constant factor approximation is impossible to obtain \cite{PT11}. Though such a result is not proved yet for the MIS problem, no polynomial time constant factor approximation algorithm exists in the literature. We study the performance of g…
Let $G=(V, E)$ be a planar graph and let $\mathcal{C}$ be a partition of $V$. We refer to the graphs induced by the vertex sets in $\mathcal{C}$ as Clusters. Let $D_{\mathcal C}$ be an arrangement of disks with a bijection between the disks and the clusters. Akitaya et al. give an algorithm to test whether $(G, \mathcal{C})$ can be embedded onto $D_{\mathcal C}$ with the additional constraint that edges are routed through a set of pipes between the disks. Based on such an embedding, we prove that every clustered graph and every disk arrangement without pipe-disk intersections has a planar stra…
A conflict-free $k$-coloring of a graph $G=(V,E)$ assigns one of $k$ different colors to some of the vertices such that, for every vertex $v$, there is a color that is assigned to exactly one vertex among $v$ and $v$'s neighbors. Such colorings have applications in wireless networking, robotics, and geometry, and are well studied in graph theory. Here we study the conflict-free coloring of geometric intersection graphs. We demonstrate that the intersection graph of $n$ geometric objects without fatness properties and size restrictions may have conflict-free chromatic number in $Ω(\log n/\log\l…
In this paper, we present an algorithm for computing a feedback vertex set of a unit disk graph of size $k$, if it exists, which runs in time $2^{O(\sqrt{k})}(n+m)$, where $n$ and $m$ denote the numbers of vertices and edges, respectively. This improves the $2^{O(\sqrt{k}\log k)}n^{O(1)}$-time algorithm for this problem on unit disk graphs by Fomin et al. [ICALP 2017]. Moreover, our algorithm is optimal assuming the exponential-time hypothesis. Also, our algorithm can be extended to handle geometric intersection graphs of similarly sized fat objects without increasing the running time.
A disk graph is the intersection graph of disks in the plane, a unit disk graph is the intersection graph of same radius disks in the plane, and a segment graph is an intersection graph of line segments in the plane. It can be seen that every disk graph can be realized by disks with centers on the integer grid and with integer radii; and similarly every unit disk graph can be realized by disks with centers on the integer grid and equal (integer) radius; and every segment graph can be realized by segments whose endpoints lie on the integer grid. Here we show that there exist disk graphs on $n$ …
A grounded L-graph is the intersection graph of a collection of "L" shapes whose topmost points belong to a common horizontal line. We prove that every grounded L-graph with clique number $ω$ has chromatic number at most $17ω^4$. This improves the doubly-exponential bound of McGuinness and generalizes the recent result that the class of circle graphs is polynomially $χ$-bounded. We also survey $χ$-boundedness problems for grounded geometric intersection graphs and give a high-level overview of recent techniques to obtain polynomial bounds.
Coloring unit-disk graphs efficiently is an important problem in the global and distributed setting, with applications in radio channel assignment problems when the communication relies on omni-directional antennas of the same power. In this context it is important to bound not only the complexity of the coloring algorithms, but also the number of colors used. In this paper, we consider two natural distributed settings. In the location-aware setting (when nodes know their coordinates in the plane), we give a constant time distributed algorithm coloring any unit-disk graph $G$ with at most $4ω(…
A unit disk intersection representation (UDR) of a graph $G$ represents each vertex of $G$ as a unit disk in the plane, such that two disks intersect if and only if their vertices are adjacent in $G$. A UDR with interior-disjoint disks is called a unit disk contact representation (UDC). We prove that it is NP-hard to decide if an outerplanar graph or an embedded tree admits a UDR. We further provide a linear-time decidable characterization of caterpillar graphs that admit a UDR. Finally we show that it can be decided in linear time if a lobster graph admits a weak UDC, which permits intersecti…
Several classical constructions illustrate the fact that the chromatic number of a graph can be arbitrarily large compared to its clique number. However, until very recently, no such construction was known for intersection graphs of geometric objects in the plane. We provide a general construction that for any arc-connected compact set $X$ in $\mathbb{R}^2$ that is not an axis-aligned rectangle and for any positive integer $k$ produces a family $\mathcal{F}$ of sets, each obtained by an independent horizontal and vertical scaling and translation of $X$, such that no three sets in $\mathcal{F}$…
An outerstring graph is an intersection graph of curves that lie in a common half-plane and have one endpoint on the boundary of that half-plane. We prove that the class of outerstring graphs is $χ$-bounded, which means that their chromatic number is bounded by a function of their clique number. This generalizes a series of previous results on $χ$-boundedness of outerstring graphs with various additional restrictions on the shape of curves or the number of times the pairs of curves can cross. The assumption that each curve has an endpoint on the boundary of the half-plane is justified by the k…
