Finding large cliques or cliques missing a few edges is a fundamental algorithmic task in the study of real-world graphs, with applications in community detection, pattern recognition, and clustering. A number of effective backtracking-based heuristics for these problems have emerged from recent empirical work in social network analysis. Given the NP-hardness of variants of clique counting, these results raise a challenge for beyond worst-case analysis of these problems. Inspired by the triadic closure of real-world graphs, Fox et al. (SICOMP 2020) introduced the notion of $c$-closed graphs and proved that maximal clique enumeration is fixed-parameter tractable with respect to $c$.
In practice, due to noise in data, one wishes to actually discover "near-cliques", which can be characterized as cliques with a sparse subgraph removed. In this work, we prove that many different kinds of maximal near-cliques can be enumerated in polynomial time (and FPT in $c$) for $c$-closed graphs. We study various established notions of such substructures, including $k$-plexes, complements of bounded-degeneracy and bounded-treewidth graphs. Interestingly, our algorithms follow relatively simple backtracking procedures, analogous to what is done in practice. Our results underscore the significance of the $c$-closed graph class for theoretical understanding of social network analysis.
We consider the following problem closely related to graph isomorphism. In a simplified version, the task is to compute the automorphism group of a given set family (or a hypergraph), that is, the group of all automorphisms of the given sets which are compatible with some permutation of their elements. In a general setting, the set family in question is a collection of cliques (called marked cliques) of a given interval graph, and the task is to compute the group of all permutations of the cliques which result from some automorpism of the underlying interval graph. This problem is obviously at…
Branchwidth determines how graphs, and more generally, arbitrary connectivity (basically symmetric and submodular) functions could be decomposed into a tree-like structure by specific cuts. We develop a general framework for designing fixed-parameter tractable (FPT) 2-approximation algorithms for branchwidth of connectivity functions. The first ingredient of our framework is combinatorial. We prove a structural theorem establishing that either a sequence of particular refinement operations could decrease the width of a branch decomposition or that the width of the decomposition is already with…
We continue the study initiated by Bonomo-Braberman and Gonzalez in 2020 on $r$-locally checkable problems. We propose a dynamic programming algorithm that takes as input a graph with an associated clique-width expression and solves a $1$-locally checkable problem under certain restrictions. We show that it runs in polynomial time in graphs of bounded clique-width, when the number of colors of the locally checkable problem is fixed. Furthermore, we present a first extension of our framework to global properties by taking into account the sizes of the color classes, and consequently enlarge the…
Biró et al. (1992) introduced $H$-graphs, intersection graphs of connected subgraphs of a subdivision of a graph $H$. They are related to many classes of geometric intersection graphs, e.g., interval graphs, circular-arc graphs, split graphs, and chordal graphs. We negatively answer the 25-year-old question of Biró et al. which asks if $H$-graphs can be recognized in polynomial time, for a fixed graph $H$. We prove that it is NP-complete if $H$ contains the diamond graph as a minor. We provide a polynomial-time algorithm recognizing $T$-graphs, for each fixed tree $T$. When $T$ is a star $S_d$…
We introduce a new subclass of chordal graphs that generalizes split graphs, which we call well-partitioned chordal graphs. Split graphs are graphs that admit a partition of the vertex set into cliques that can be arranged in a star structure, the leaves of which are of size one. Well-partitioned chordal graphs are a generalization of this concept in the following two ways. First, the cliques in the partition can be arranged in a tree structure, and second, each clique is of arbitrary size. We provide a characterization of well-partitioned chordal graphs by forbidden induced subgraphs, and giv…
We propose a new distribution-free model of social networks. Our definitions are motivated by one of the most universal signatures of social networks, triadic closure---the property that pairs of vertices with common neighbors tend to be adjacent. Our most basic definition is that of a "$c$-closed" graph, where for every pair of vertices $u,v$ with at least $c$ common neighbors, $u$ and $v$ are adjacent. We study the classic problem of enumerating all maximal cliques, an important task in social network analysis. We prove that this problem is fixed-parameter tractable with respect to $c$ on $c…
In this work we consider a straightforward linear programming formulation of the recently introduced $\{k\}$-packing function problem in graphs, for each fixed value of the positive integer number $k$. We analyse a special relation between the case $ k = 1$ and $ k \geq 2$ and give a sufficient condition for optimality ---the perfection--- of the closed neighbourhood matrix $N[G]$ of the input graph $G$. We begin a structural study of graphs satisfying this condition. In particular, we look for a characterization of graphs that have perfect closed neighbourhood matrices which involves the prop…
Treewidth is an important graph invariant, relevant for both structural and algorithmic reasons. A necessary condition for a graph class to have bounded treewidth is the absence of large cliques. We study graph classes closed under taking induced subgraphs in which this condition is also sufficient, which we call $(tw,ω)$-bounded. Such graph classes are known to have useful algorithmic applications related to variants of the clique and $k$-coloring problems. We consider six well-known graph containment relations: the minor, topological minor, subgraph, induced minor, induced topological minor,…
Clique-width is a well-studied graph parameter owing to its use in understanding algorithmic tractability: if the clique-width of a graph class ${\cal G}$ is bounded by a constant, a wide range of problems that are NP-complete in general can be shown to be polynomial-time solvable on ${\cal G}$. For this reason, the boundedness or unboundedness of clique-width has been investigated and determined for many graph classes. We survey these results for hereditary graph classes, which are the graph classes closed under taking induced subgraphs. We then discuss the algorithmic consequences of these r…
This paper deals with the complexity of some natural graph problems when parametrized by {measures that are restrictions of} clique-width, such as modular-width and neighborhood diversity. The main contribution of this paper is to introduce a novel parameter, called iterated type partition, that can be computed in polynomial time and nicely places between modular-width and neighborhood diversity. We prove that the Equitable Coloring problem is W[1]-hard when parametrized by the iterated type partition. This result extends to modular-width, answering an open question about the possibility to ha…
For any positive integer $k$ and any $n$-vertex graph $G$, let $ι(G,k)$ denote the size of a smallest set $D$ of vertices of $G$ such that the graph obtained from $G$ by deleting the closed neighbourhood of $D$ contains no $k$-clique. Thus, $ι(G,1)$ is the domination number of $G$. We prove that if $G$ is connected, then $ι(G,k) \leq \frac{n}{k+1}$ unless $G$ is a $k$-clique or $k = 2$ and $G$ is a $5$-cycle. The bound is sharp. The case $k=1$ is a classical result of Ore, and the case $k=2$ is a recent result of Caro and Hansberg. Our result solves a problem of Caro and Hansberg.
A graph $G$ is weakly $γ$-closed if every induced subgraph of $G$ contains one vertex $v$ such that for each non-neighbor $u$ of $v$ it holds that $|N(u)\cap N(v)|<γ$. The weak closure $γ(G)$ of a graph, recently introduced by Fox et al. [SIAM J. Comp. 2020], is the smallest number such that $G$ is weakly $γ$-closed. This graph parameter is never larger than the degeneracy (plus one) and can be significantly smaller. Extending the work of Fox et al. [SIAM J. Comp. 2020] on clique enumeration, we show that several problems related to finding dense subgraphs, such as the enumeration of bicliques…
If G is a closed Noetherian graph on a sigma-compact Polish space without an infinite clique, it is consistent with the choiceless set theory ZF+DC that G is countably chromatic and there is no Vitali set.
The clique complex of a graph G is a simplicial complex whose simplices are all the cliques of G, and the line graph L(G) of G is a graph whose vertices are the edges of G and the edges of L(G) are incident edges of G. In this article, we determine the homotopy type of the clique complexes of line graphs for several classes of graphs including triangle-free graphs, chordal graphs, complete multipartite graphs, wheel-free graphs, and 4-regular circulant graphs. We also give a closed form formula for the homotopy type of these complexes in several cases.
A graph is $d$-orientable if its edges can be oriented so that the maximum in-degree of the resulting digraph is at most $d$. $d$-orientability is a well-studied concept with close connections to fundamental graph-theoretic notions and applications as a load balancing problem. In this paper we consider the d-ORIENTABLE DELETION problem: given a graph $G=(V,E)$, delete the minimum number of vertices to make $G$ $d$-orientable. We contribute a number of results that improve the state of the art on this problem. Specifically: - We show that the problem is W[2]-hard and $\log n$-inapproximable wit…
For a graph $H$, a graph $G$ is an $H$-graph if it is an intersection graph of connected subgraphs of some subdivision of $H$. $H$-graphs naturally generalize several important graph classes like interval or circular-arc graph. This class was introduced in the early 1990s by Bíró, Hujter, and Tuza. Recently, Chaplick et al. initiated the algorithmic study of $H$-graphs by showing that a number of fundamental optimization problems are solvable in polynomial time on $H$-graphs. We extend and complement these algorithmic findings in several directions. First we show that for every fixed $H$, the …
Let $\mathcal{C}$ be a class of graphs closed under taking induced subgraphs. We say that $\mathcal{C}$ has the {\em clique-stable set separation property} if there exists $c \in \mathbb{N}$ such that for every graph $G \in \mathcal{C}$ there is a collection $\mathcal{P}$ of partitions $(X,Y)$ of the vertex set of $G$ with $|\mathcal{P}| \leq |V(G)|^c$ and with the following property: if $K$ is a clique of $G$, and $S$ is a stable set of $G$, and $K \cap S =\emptyset$, then there is $(X,Y) \in \mathcal{P}$ with $K \subseteq X$ and $S \subseteq Y$. In 1991 M. Yannakakis conjectured that the cla…
Moderately beyond clique-width: reduced component max-leaf and related parameters
Univ Lyon, CNRS, ENS de Lyon, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1（里昂大学、法国国家科学研究中心、巴黎高等师范学院里昂分校、克洛德·贝尔纳里昂大学）；Institute of Informatics, University of Warsaw（华沙大学信息学研究所）；Department of Mathematics and Research Institute for Natural Sciences, Hanyang University（汉阳大学数学系与自然科学研究所）；Discrete Mathematics Group, Institute for Basic Science (IBS)（基础科学研究院离散数学组）
The Lovász theta number is a semidefinite programming bound on the clique number of (the complement of) a given graph. Given a vertex-transitive graph, every vertex belongs to a maximal clique, and so one can instead apply this semidefinite programming bound to the local graph. In the case of the Paley graph, the local graph is circulant, and so this bound reduces to a linear programming bound, allowing for fast computations. Impressively, the value of this program with Schrijver's nonnegativity constraint rivals the state-of-the-art closed-form bound recently proved by Hanson and Petridis. We…
Many well-known NP-hard algorithmic problems on directed graphs resist efficient parametrisations with most known width measures for directed graphs, such as directed treewidth, DAG-width, Kelly-width and many others. While these focus on measuring how close a digraph is to an oriented tree resp. a directed acyclic graph, in this paper, we investigate directed modular width as a parameter, which is closer to the concept of clique-width. We investigate applications of modular decompositions of directed graphs to a wide range of algorithmic problems and derive FPT-algorithms for several well-kno…
The Satisfactory Partition problem consists in deciding if the set of vertices of a given undirected graph can be partitioned into two nonempty parts such that each vertex has at least as many neighbours in its part as in the other part. This problem was introduced by Gerber and Kobler [European J. Oper. Res. 125 (2000) 283-291] and further studied by other authors, but its parameterized complexity remains open until now. It is known that the Satisfactory Partition problem, as well as a variant where the parts are required to be of the same cardinality, are NP-complete. We enhance our understa…
In this paper we show that every graph of pathwidth less than $k$ that has a path of order $n$ also has an induced path of order at least $\frac{1}{3} n^{1/k}$. This is an exponential improvement and a generalization of the polylogarithmic bounds obtained by Esperet, Lemoine and Maffray (2016) for interval graphs of bounded clique number. We complement this result with an upper-bound. This result is then used to prove the two following generalizations: - every graph of treewidth less than $k$ that has a path of order $n$ contains an induced path of order at least $\frac{1}{4} (\log n)^{1/k}$; …
