203 research outputs found
Combinatorics and geometry of finite and infinite squaregraphs
Squaregraphs were originally defined as finite plane graphs in which all
inner faces are quadrilaterals (i.e., 4-cycles) and all inner vertices (i.e.,
the vertices not incident with the outer face) have degrees larger than three.
The planar dual of a finite squaregraph is determined by a triangle-free chord
diagram of the unit disk, which could alternatively be viewed as a
triangle-free line arrangement in the hyperbolic plane. This representation
carries over to infinite plane graphs with finite vertex degrees in which the
balls are finite squaregraphs. Algebraically, finite squaregraphs are median
graphs for which the duals are finite circular split systems. Hence
squaregraphs are at the crosspoint of two dualities, an algebraic and a
geometric one, and thus lend themselves to several combinatorial
interpretations and structural characterizations. With these and the
5-colorability theorem for circle graphs at hand, we prove that every
squaregraph can be isometrically embedded into the Cartesian product of five
trees. This embedding result can also be extended to the infinite case without
reference to an embedding in the plane and without any cardinality restriction
when formulated for median graphs free of cubes and further finite
obstructions. Further, we exhibit a class of squaregraphs that can be embedded
into the product of three trees and we characterize those squaregraphs that are
embeddable into the product of just two trees. Finally, finite squaregraphs
enjoy a number of algorithmic features that do not extend to arbitrary median
graphs. For instance, we show that median-generating sets of finite
squaregraphs can be computed in polynomial time, whereas, not unexpectedly, the
corresponding problem for median graphs turns out to be NP-hard.Comment: 46 pages, 14 figure
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