Finding Independent Sets in Unions of Perfect Graphs

The maximum independent set problem (MaxIS) on general graphs is known to be NP-hard to approximate within a factor of $n^{1-epsilon}$, for any $epsilon > 0$. However, there are many ``easy" classes of graphs on which the problem can be solved in polynomial time. In this context, an interesting question is that of computing the maximum independent set in a graph that can be expressed as the union of a small number of graphs from an easy class. The MaxIS problem has been studied on unions of interval graphs and chordal graphs. We study the MaxIS problem on unions of perfect graphs (which generalize the above two classes). We present an $O(sqrt{n})$-approximation algorithm when the input graph is the union of two perfect graphs. We also show that the MaxIS problem on unions of two comparability graphs (a subclass of perfect graphs) cannot be approximated within any constant factor