2 research outputs found
Graphs with at most two moplexes
A moplex is a natural graph structure that arises when lifting Dirac's
classical theorem from chordal graphs to general graphs. However, while every
non-complete graph has at least two moplexes, little is known about structural
properties of graphs with a bounded number of moplexes. The study of these
graphs is motivated by the parallel between moplexes in general graphs and
simplicial modules in chordal graphs: Unlike in the moplex setting, properties
of chordal graphs with a bounded number of simplicial modules are well
understood. For instance, chordal graphs having at most two simplicial modules
are interval. In this work we initiate an investigation of -moplex graphs,
which are defined as graphs containing at most moplexes. Of particular
interest is the smallest nontrivial case , which forms a counterpart to
the class of interval graphs. As our main structural result, we show that the
class of connected -moplex graphs is sandwiched between the classes of
proper interval graphs and cocomparability graphs; moreover, both inclusions
are tight for hereditary classes. From a complexity theoretic viewpoint, this
leads to the natural question of whether the presence of at most two moplexes
guarantees a sufficient amount of structure to efficiently solve problems that
are known to be intractable on cocomparability graphs, but not on proper
interval graphs. We develop new reductions that answer this question negatively
for two prominent problems fitting this profile, namely Graph Isomorphism and
Max-Cut. On the other hand, we prove that every connected -moplex graph
contains a Hamiltonian path, generalising the same property of connected proper
interval graphs. Furthermore, for graphs with a higher number of moplexes, we
lift the previously known result that graphs without asteroidal triples have at
most two moplexes to the more general setting of larger asteroidal sets