Structural parameterizations for boxicity

The boxicity of a graph $G$ is the least integer $d$ such that $G$ has an intersection model of axis-aligned $d$-dimensional boxes. Boxicity, the problem of deciding whether a given graph $G$ has boxicity at most $d$, is NP-complete for every fixed $d \ge 2$. We show that boxicity is fixed-parameter tractable when parameterized by the cluster vertex deletion number of the input graph. This generalizes the result of Adiga et al., that boxicity is fixed-parameter tractable in the vertex cover number. Moreover, we show that boxicity admits an additive $1$-approximation when parameterized by the pathwidth of the input graph. Finally, we provide evidence in favor of a conjecture of Adiga et al. that boxicity remains NP-complete when parameterized by the treewidth.Comment: 19 page

Boxicity of Series Parallel Graphs

The three well-known graph classes, planar graphs (P), series-parallel graphs(SP) and outer planar graphs(OP) satisfy the following proper inclusion relation: OP C SP C P. It is known that box(G) <= 3 if G belongs to P and box(G) <= 2 if G belongs to OP. Thus it is interesting to decide whether the maximum possible value of the boxicity of series-parallel graphs is 2 or 3. In this paper we construct a series-parallel graph with boxicity 3, thus resolving this question. Recently Chandran and Sivadasan showed that for any G, box(G) <= treewidth(G)+2. They conjecture that for any k, there exists a k-tree with boxicity k+1. (This would show that their upper bound is tight but for an additive factor of 1, since the treewidth of any k-tree equals k.) The series-parallel graph we construct in this paper is a 2-tree with boxicity 3 and is thus a first step towards proving their conjecture.Comment: 10 pages, 0 figure

Boxicity and Cubicity of Asteroidal Triple free graphs

An axis parallel $d$-dimensional box is the Cartesian product $R_1 \times R_2 \times ... \times R_d$ where each $R_i$ is a closed interval on the real line. The {\it boxicity} of a graph $G$, denoted as \boxi(G), is the minimum integer $d$ such that $G$ can be represented as the intersection graph of a collection of $d$-dimensional boxes. An axis parallel unit cube in $d$-dimensional space or a $d$-cube is defined as the Cartesian product $R_1 \times R_2 \times ... \times R_d$ where each $R_i$ is a closed interval on the real line of the form $[a_i,a_i + 1]$. The {\it cubicity} of $G$, denoted as \cub(G), is the minimum integer $d$ such that $G$ can be represented as the intersection graph of a collection of $d$-cubes. Let $S(m)$ denote a star graph on $m+1$ nodes. We define {\it claw number} of a graph $G$ as the largest positive integer $k$ such that $S(k)$ is an induced subgraph of $G$ and denote it as \claw. Let $G$ be an AT-free graph with chromatic number $\chi(G)$ and claw number \claw. In this paper we will show that \boxi(G) \leq \chi(G) and this bound is tight. We also show that \cub(G) \leq \boxi(G)(\ceil{\log_2 \claw} +2) $\leq$ \chi(G)(\ceil{\log_2 \claw} +2). If $G$ is an AT-free graph having girth at least 5 then \boxi(G) \leq 2 and therefore \cub(G) \leq 2\ceil{\log_2 \claw} +4.Comment: 15 pages: We are replacing our earlier paper regarding boxicity of permutation graphs with a superior result. Here we consider the boxicity of AT-free graphs, which is a super class of permutation graph

Boxicity and separation dimension

A family $\mathcal{F}$ of permutations of the vertices of a hypergraph $H$ is called 'pairwise suitable' for $H$ if, for every pair of disjoint edges in $H$, there exists a permutation in $\mathcal{F}$ in which all the vertices in one edge precede those in the other. The cardinality of a smallest such family of permutations for $H$ is called the 'separation dimension' of $H$ and is denoted by $\pi(H)$. Equivalently, $\pi(H)$ is the smallest natural number $k$ so that the vertices of $H$ can be embedded in $\mathbb{R}^k$ such that any two disjoint edges of $H$ can be separated by a hyperplane normal to one of the axes. We show that the separation dimension of a hypergraph $H$ is equal to the 'boxicity' of the line graph of $H$. This connection helps us in borrowing results and techniques from the extensive literature on boxicity to study the concept of separation dimension.Comment: This is the full version of a paper by the same name submitted to WG-2014. Some results proved in this paper are also present in arXiv:1212.6756. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1212.675

Boxicity and topological invariants

The boxicity of a graph $G=(V,E)$ is the smallest integer $k$ for which there exist $k$ interval graphs $G_i=(V,E_i)$, $1 \le i \le k$, such that $E=E_1 \cap \cdots \cap E_k$. In the first part of this note, we prove that every graph on $m$ edges has boxicity $O(\sqrt{m \log m})$, which is asymptotically best possible. We use this result to study the connection between the boxicity of graphs and their Colin de Verdi\`ere invariant, which share many similarities. Known results concerning the two parameters suggest that for any graph $G$, the boxicity of $G$ is at most the Colin de Verdi\`ere invariant of $G$, denoted by $\mu(G)$. We observe that every graph $G$ has boxicity $O(\mu(G)^4(\log \mu(G))^2)$, while there are graphs $G$ with boxicity $\Omega(\mu(G)\sqrt{\log \mu(G)})$. In the second part of this note, we focus on graphs embeddable on a surface of Euler genus $g$. We prove that these graphs have boxicity $O(\sqrt{g}\log g)$, while some of these graphs have boxicity $\Omega(\sqrt{g \log g})$. This improves the previously best known upper and lower bounds. These results directly imply a nearly optimal bound on the dimension of the adjacency poset of graphs on surfaces.Comment: 6 page