In 1990, Hendry conjectured that all Hamiltonian chordal graphs are cycle extendable. After a series of papers confirming the conjecture for a number of graph classes, the conjecture is yet refuted by Lafond and Seamone in 2015. Given that their counterexamples are not strongly chordal graphs and they are all only $2$-connected, Lafond and Seamone asked the following two questions: (1) Are Hamiltonian strongly chordal graphs cycle extendable? (2) Is there an integer $k$ such that all $k$-connected Hamiltonian chordal graphs are cycle extendable?
Later, a conjecture stronger than Hendry's is proposed. In this paper, we resolve all these questions in the negative. On the positive side, we add to the list of cycle extendable graphs two more graph classes, namely, Hamiltonian $4$-\textsc{fan}-free chordal graphs where every induced $K_5 - e$ has true twins, and Hamiltonian $\{4\textsc{-fan}, \overline{A} \}$-free chordal graphs.
In 1990, Hendry conjectured that every Hamiltonian chordal graph is cycle extendible; that is, the vertices of any non-Hamiltonian cycle are contained in a cycle of length one greater. We disprove this conjecture by constructing counterexamples on $n$ vertices for any $n \geq 15$. Furthermore, we show that there exist counterexamples where the ratio of the length of a non-extendible cycle to the total number of vertices can be made arbitrarily small. We then consider cycle extendibility in Hamiltonian chordal graphs where certain induced subgraphs are forbidden, notably $P_n$ and the bull.
Let $lct(G)$ be the minimum cardinality of a set of vertices that intersects every longest cycle of a 2-connected graph $G$. We show that $lct(G)\leq k-1$ if $G$ is a partial $k$-tree and that $lct(G)\leq \max \{1, {ω(G){-}3}\}$ if $G$ is chordal, where $ω(G)$ is the cardinality of a maximum clique in $G$. Those results imply that all longest cycles intersect in 2-connected series parallel graphs and in 3-trees.
A bipartite graph is chordal bipartite if every cycle of length at least six has a chord in it. M$\ddot{\rm u}$ller \cite {muller1996Hamiltonian} has shown that the Hamiltonian cycle problem is NP-complete on chordal bipartite graphs by presenting a polynomial-time reduction from the satisfiability problem. The microscopic view of the reduction instances reveals that the instances are $P_9$-free chordal bipartite graphs, and hence the status of Hamiltonicity in $P_8$-free chordal bipartite graphs is open. In this paper, we identify the first non-trivial subclass of $P_8$-free chordal bipartite…
Suppose that D is an acyclic orientation of a graph G. An arc of D is called dependent if its reversal creates a directed cycle. Let m and M denote the minimum and the maximum of the number of dependent arcs over all acyclic orientations of G. We call G fully orientable if G has an acyclic orientation with exactly d dependent arcs for every d satisfying m <= d <= M. A graph G is called chordal if every cycle in G of length at least four has a chord. We show that all chordal graphs are fully orientable.
\emph{Strictly Chordality-$k$ graphs ($SC_k$)} are graphs which are either cycle-free or every induced cycle is of length exactly $k, k \geq 3$. Strictly chordality-3 and strictly chordality-4 graphs are well known chordal and chordal bipartite graphs, respectively. For $k\geq 5$, the study has been recently initiated in \cite{sadagopan} and various structural and algorithmic results are reported. In this paper, we show that maximum independent set (MIS), minimum vertex cover, minimum dominating set, feedback vertex set (FVS), odd cycle transversal (OCT), even cycle transversal (ECT) and Stein…
Strictly Chordality-k graphs (SC_k graphs) are graphs which are either cycle free or every induced cycle is exactly k, for some fixed k, k \geq 3. Note that k = 3 and k = 4 are precisely the Chordal graphs and Chordal Bipartite graphs, respectively. In this paper, we initiate a structural and an algorithmic study of SCk, k \geq 5 graphs.
Characterization of k-chordal graphs based on the existence of a "simplicial path" was shown in [Chv{á}tal et al. Note: Dirac-type characterizations of graphs without long chordless cycles. Discrete Mathematics, 256, 445-448, 2002]. We give a characterization of k-chordal graphs which is a generalization of the known characterization of chordal graphs due to [G. A. Dirac. On rigid circuit graphs. Abh. Math. Sem. Univ. Hamburg, 25, 71-76, 1961] that use notions of a "simplicial vertex" and a "simplicial ordering".
The sun is the graph obtained from a cycle of length even and at least six by adding edges to make the even-indexed vertices pairwise adjacent. Suns play an important role in the study of strongly chordal graphs. A graph is chordal if it does not contain an induced cycle of length at least four. A graph is strongly chordal if it is chordal and every even cycle has a chord joining vertices whose distance on the cycle is odd. Farber proved that a graph is strongly chordal if and only if it is chordal and contains no induced suns. There are well known polynomial-time algorithms for recognizing a …
The mirror (or bipartite complement) mir(B) of a bipartite graph B=(X,Y,E) has the same color classes X and Y as B, and two vertices x in X and y in Y are adjacent in mir(B) if and only if xy is not in E. A bipartite graph is chordal bipartite if none of its induced subgraphs is a chordless cycle with at least six vertices. In this paper, we deal with chordal bipartite graphs whose mirror is chordal bipartite as well; we call these graphs auto-chordal bipartite graphs (ACB graphs for short). We describe the relationship to some known graph classes such as interval and strongly chordal graphs a…
A bipartite graph is chordal bipartite if every cycle of length at least 6 has a chord in it. In this paper, we investigate the structure of $P_5$-free chordal bipartite graphs and show that these graphs have a Nested Neighborhood Ordering, a special ordering among its vertices. Further, using this ordering, we present polynomial-time algorithms for classical problems such as Hamiltonian cycle (path) and longest path. Two variants of Hamiltonian path include Steiner path and minimum leaf spanning tree, and we obtain polynomial-time algorithms for these problems as well restricted to $P_5$-free…
DP-coloring was introduced by Dvořák and Postle as a generalization of list coloring. It was originally used to solve a longstanding conjecture by Borodin, stating that every planar graph without cycles of lengths 4 to 8 is 3-choosable. In this paper, we give three sufficient conditions for a planar graph to be DP-4-colorable. Actually all the results (Theorem 1.3, 1.4 and 1.7) are stated in the ``color extendability'' form, and uniformly proved by vertex identification and discharging method.
A cycle-transversal of a graph G is a subset T of V(G) such that T intersects every cycle of G. A clique cycle-transversal, or cct for short, is a cycle-transversal which is a clique. Recognizing graphs which admit a cct can be done in polynomial time; however, no structural characterization of such graphs is known. We characterize distance-hereditary graphs admitting a cct in terms of forbidden induced subgraphs. This extends similar results for chordal graphs and cographs.
The class ${\cal L}_k$ of $k$-leaf powers consists of graphs $G=(V,E)$ that have a $k$-leaf root, that is, a tree $T$ with leaf set $V$, where $xy \in E$, if and only if the $T$-distance between $x$ and $y$ is at most $k$. Structure and linear time recognition algorithms have been found for $2$-, $3$-, $4$-, and, to some extent, $5$-leaf powers, and it is known that the union of all $k$-leaf powers, that is, the graph class ${\cal L} = \bigcup_{k=2}^\infty {\cal L}_k$, forms a proper subclass of strongly chordal graphs. Despite from that, no essential progress has been made lately. In this pap…
Chordal graphs are the graphs in which every cycle of length at least four has a chord. A set $S$ is a vertex separator for vertices $a$ and $b$ if the removal of $S$ of the graph separates $a$ and $b$ into distinct connected components. A graph $G$ is chordal if and only if every minimal vertex separator is a clique. We study subclasses of chordal graphs defined by restrictions imposed on the intersections of its minimal separator cliques. Our goal is to characterize them by forbidden induced subgraphs. Some of these classes have already been studied such as chordal graphs in which two minima…
A graph $G$ is well-covered if all its maximal independent sets are of the same cardinality. Assume that a weight function $w$ is defined on its vertices. Then $G$ is $w$-well-covered if all maximal independent sets are of the same weight. For every graph $G$, the set of weight functions $w$ such that $G$ is $w$-well-covered is a vector space, denoted $WCW(G)$. Let $B$ be a complete bipartite induced subgraph of $G$ on vertex sets of bipartition $B_{X}$ and $B_{Y}$. Then $B$ is generating if there exists an independent set $S$ such that $S \cup B_{X}$ and $S \cup B_{Y}$ are both maximal indepe…
Let G=(V,E) be a connected graph. A set U subseteq V is convex if G[U] is connected and all vertices of V\U have at most one neighbor in U. Let sigma(W) denote the unique smallest convex set that contains W subseteq V. Two players play the following game. Consider a convex set U and call it the `playground.' Initially, U = emptyset. When U=V, the player to move loses the game. Otherwise, that player chooses a vertex x in V\U which is at distance at most two from U. The effect of the move is that the playground U changes into sigma(U cup {x}) and the opponent is presented with this new playgrou…
In 1993, Savage, Squire, and West described an inductive construction for generating every acyclic orientation of a chordal graph exactly once, flipping one arc at a time. We provide two generalizations of this result. Firstly, we describe Gray codes for acyclic orientations of hypergraphs that satisfy a simple ordering condition, which generalizes the notion of perfect elimination order of graphs. This unifies the Savage-Squire-West construction with a recent algorithm for generating elimination trees of chordal graphs. Secondly, we consider quotients of lattices of acyclic orientations of ch…
A common task in phylogenetics is to find an evolutionary tree representing proximity relationships between species. This motivates the notion of leaf powers: a graph G = (V, E) is a leaf power if there exist a tree T on leafset V and a threshold k such that uv is an edge if and only if the distance between u and v in T is at most k. Characterizing leaf powers is a challenging open problem, along with determining the complexity of their recognition. This is in part due to the fact that few graphs are known to not be leaf powers, as such graphs are difficult to construct. Recently, Nevries and …
We study the algorithmic properties of the graph class Chordal-ke, that is, graphs that can be turned into a chordal graph by adding at most k edges or, equivalently, the class of graphs of fill-in at most k. We discover that a number of fundamental intractable optimization problems being parameterized by k admit subexponential algorithms on graphs from Chordal-ke. We identify a large class of optimization problems on Chordal-ke that admit algorithms with the typical running time 2^{O(\sqrt{k}\log k)}\cdot n^{O(1)}. Examples of the problems from this class are finding an independent set of max…
A vertex in a graph is simplicial if its neighborhood forms a clique. We consider three generalizations of the concept of simplicial vertices: avoidable vertices (also known as \textit{OCF}-vertices), simplicial paths, and their common generalization avoidable paths, introduced here. We present a general conjecture on the existence of avoidable paths. If true, the conjecture would imply a result due to Ohtsuki, Cheung, and Fujisawa from 1976 on the existence of avoidable vertices, and a result due to Chvátal, Sritharan, and Rusu from 2002 the existence of simplicial paths. In turn, both of the…
For a connected graph, the Hamiltonian cycle (path) is a simple cycle (path) that spans all the vertices in the graph. It is known from \cite{muller,garey} that HAMILTONIAN CYCLE (PATH) are NP-complete in general graphs and chordal bipartite graphs. A convex bipartite graph $G$ with bipartition $(X,Y)$ and an ordering $X=(x_1,\ldots,x_n)$, is a bipartite graph such that for each $y \in Y$, the neighborhood of $y$ in $X$ appears consecutively. $G$ is said to have convexity with respect to $X$. Further, convex bipartite graphs are a subclass of chordal bipartite graphs. In this paper, we present…
In this work, we introduce a new graph convexity, that we call Cycle Convexity, motivated by related notions in Knot Theory. For a graph $G=(V,E)$, define the interval function in the Cycle Convexity as $I_{cc}(S) = S\cup \{v\in V(G)\mid \text{there is a cycle }C\text{ in }G\text{ such that } V(C)\setminus S=\{v\}\}$, for every $S\subseteq V(G)$. We say that $S\subseteq V(G)$ is convex if $I_{cc}(S)=S$. The convex hull of $S\subseteq V(G)$, denoted by $Hull(S)$, is the inclusion-wise minimal convex set $S'$ such that $S\subseteq S'$. A set $S\subseteq V(G)$ is called a hull set if $Hull(S)=V(G…
Let $G = (V, E)$ be a graph. A set $S \subseteq V$ is a restrained dominating set (RDS) if every vertex not in $S$ is adjacent to a vertex in $S$ and to a vertex in $V - S$. The restrained domination number of $G$, denoted by $γ_r(G)$, is the smallest cardinality of a restrained dominating set of $G$. Finding the restrained domination number is NP-hard for bipartite and chordal graphs. Let $G_n^i$ be the family of restrained dominating sets of a graph $G$ of order $n$ with cardinality $i$, and let $d_r(G_n, i)=|G_n^i|$. The restrained domination polynomial (RDP) of $G_n$, $D_r(G_n, x)$ is defi…
A hole in a graph is an induced cycle of length at least $4$, and an antihole is the complement of an induced cycle of length at least $4$. A hole or antihole is long if its length is at least $5$. For an integer $k$, the $k$-prism is the graph consisting of two cliques of size $k$ joined by a matching. The complexity of Maximum (Weight) Independent Set (MWIS) in long-hole-free graphs remains an important open problem. In this paper we give a polynomial time algorithm to solve MWIS in long-hole-free graphs with no $k$-prism (for any fixed integer $k$), and a subexponential algorithm for MWIS i…
A cycle double cover (CDC) of an undirected graph is a collection of the graph's cycles such that every edge of the graph belongs to exactly two cycles. We describe a constructive method for generating all the cubic graphs that have a 6-CDC (a CDC in which every cycle has length 6). As an application of the method, we prove that all such graphs have a Hamiltonian cycle. A sense of direction is an edge labeling on graphs that follows a globally consistent scheme and is known to considerably reduce the complexity of several distributed problems. In [9], a particular instance of sense of directio…
We prove a recent conjecture of Beisegel et al. that for every positive integer k, every graph containing an induced P_k also contains an avoidable P_k. Avoidability generalises the notion of simpliciality best known in the context of chordal graphs. The conjecture was only established for k in {1,2} (Ohtsuki et al. 1976, and Beisegel et al. 2019, respectively). Our result also implies a result of Chvátal et al. 2002, which assumed cycle restrictions. We provide a constructive and elementary proof, relying on a single trick regarding the induction hypothesis. In the line of previous works, we …
Without further ado, we present the P_3-game. The P_3-game is decidable for elementary classes of graphs such as paths and cycles. From an algorithmic point of view, the connected P_3-game is fascinating. We show that the connected P_3-game is polynomially decidable for classes such as trees, chordal graphs, ladders, cacti, outerplanar graphs and circular arc graphs.
