On the choosability of claw-free perfect graphs

It has been conjectured that for every claw-free graph $G$ the choice number of $G$ is equal to its chromatic number. We focus on the special case of this conjecture where $G$ is perfect. Claw-free perfect graphs can be decomposed via clique-cutset into two special classes called elementary graphs and peculiar graphs. Based on this decomposition we prove that the conjecture holds true for every claw-free perfect graph with maximum clique size at most $4$

Clique-Stable Set separation in perfect graphs with no balanced skew-partitions

Inspired by a question of Yannakakis on the Vertex Packing polytope of perfect graphs, we study the Clique-Stable Set Separation in a non-hereditary subclass of perfect graphs. A cut (B,W) of G (a bipartition of V(G)) separates a clique K and a stable set S if $K\subseteq B$ and $S\subseteq W$. A Clique-Stable Set Separator is a family of cuts such that for every clique K, and for every stable set S disjoint from K, there exists a cut in the family that separates K and S. Given a class of graphs, the question is to know whether every graph of the class admits a Clique-Stable Set Separator containing only polynomially many cuts. It is open for the class of all graphs, and also for perfect graphs, which was Yannakakis' original question. Here we investigate on perfect graphs with no balanced skew-partition; the balanced skew-partition was introduced in the proof of the Strong Perfect Graph Theorem. Recently, Chudnovsky, Trotignon, Trunck and Vuskovic proved that forbidding this unfriendly decomposition permits to recursively decompose Berge graphs using 2-join and complement 2-join until reaching a basic graph, and they found an efficient combinatorial algorithm to color those graphs. We apply their decomposition result to prove that perfect graphs with no balanced skew-partition admit a quadratic-size Clique-Stable Set Separator, by taking advantage of the good behavior of 2-join with respect to this property. We then generalize this result and prove that the Strong Erdos-Hajnal property holds in this class, which means that every such graph has a linear-size biclique or complement biclique. This property does not hold for all perfect graphs (Fox 2006), and moreover when the Strong Erdos-Hajnal property holds in a hereditary class of graphs, then both the Erdos-Hajnal property and the polynomial Clique-Stable Set Separation hold.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1308.644