21,576 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
The Hardness of Approximation of Euclidean k-means
The Euclidean -means problem is a classical problem that has been
extensively studied in the theoretical computer science, machine learning and
the computational geometry communities. In this problem, we are given a set of
points in Euclidean space , and the goal is to choose centers in
so that the sum of squared distances of each point to its nearest center
is minimized. The best approximation algorithms for this problem include a
polynomial time constant factor approximation for general and a
-approximation which runs in time . At
the other extreme, the only known computational complexity result for this
problem is NP-hardness [ADHP'09]. The main difficulty in obtaining hardness
results stems from the Euclidean nature of the problem, and the fact that any
point in can be a potential center. This gap in understanding left open
the intriguing possibility that the problem might admit a PTAS for all .
In this paper we provide the first hardness of approximation for the
Euclidean -means problem. Concretely, we show that there exists a constant
such that it is NP-hard to approximate the -means objective
to within a factor of . We show this via an efficient reduction
from the vertex cover problem on triangle-free graphs: given a triangle-free
graph, the goal is to choose the fewest number of vertices which are incident
on all the edges. Additionally, we give a proof that the current best hardness
results for vertex cover can be carried over to triangle-free graphs. To show
this we transform , a known hard vertex cover instance, by taking a graph
product with a suitably chosen graph , and showing that the size of the
(normalized) maximum independent set is almost exactly preserved in the product
graph using a spectral analysis, which might be of independent interest
Bucolic Complexes
We introduce and investigate bucolic complexes, a common generalization of
systolic complexes and of CAT(0) cubical complexes. They are defined as simply
connected prism complexes satisfying some local combinatorial conditions. We
study various approaches to bucolic complexes: from graph-theoretic and
topological perspective, as well as from the point of view of geometric group
theory. In particular, we characterize bucolic complexes by some properties of
their 2-skeleta and 1-skeleta (that we call bucolic graphs), by which several
known results are generalized. We also show that locally-finite bucolic
complexes are contractible, and satisfy some nonpositive-curvature-like
properties.Comment: 45 pages, 4 figure
On a class of intersection graphs
Given a directed graph D = (V,A) we define its intersection graph I(D) =
(A,E) to be the graph having A as a node-set and two nodes of I(D) are adjacent
if their corresponding arcs share a common node that is the tail of at least
one of these arcs. We call these graphs facility location graphs since they
arise from the classical uncapacitated facility location problem. In this paper
we show that facility location graphs are hard to recognize and they are easy
to recognize when the graph is triangle-free. We also determine the complexity
of the vertex coloring, the stable set and the facility location problems on
that class
Ramified rectilinear polygons: coordinatization by dendrons
Simple rectilinear polygons (i.e. rectilinear polygons without holes or
cutpoints) can be regarded as finite rectangular cell complexes coordinatized
by two finite dendrons. The intrinsic -metric is thus inherited from the
product of the two finite dendrons via an isometric embedding. The rectangular
cell complexes that share this same embedding property are called ramified
rectilinear polygons. The links of vertices in these cell complexes may be
arbitrary bipartite graphs, in contrast to simple rectilinear polygons where
the links of points are either 4-cycles or paths of length at most 3. Ramified
rectilinear polygons are particular instances of rectangular complexes obtained
from cube-free median graphs, or equivalently simply connected rectangular
complexes with triangle-free links. The underlying graphs of finite ramified
rectilinear polygons can be recognized among graphs in linear time by a
Lexicographic Breadth-First-Search. Whereas the symmetry of a simple
rectilinear polygon is very restricted (with automorphism group being a
subgroup of the dihedral group ), ramified rectilinear polygons are
universal: every finite group is the automorphism group of some ramified
rectilinear polygon.Comment: 27 pages, 6 figure
Covering Partial Cubes with Zones
A partial cube is a graph having an isometric embedding in a hypercube.
Partial cubes are characterized by a natural equivalence relation on the edges,
whose classes are called zones. The number of zones determines the minimal
dimension of a hypercube in which the graph can be embedded. We consider the
problem of covering the vertices of a partial cube with the minimum number of
zones. The problem admits several special cases, among which are the problem of
covering the cells of a line arrangement with a minimum number of lines, and
the problem of finding a minimum-size fibre in a bipartite poset. For several
such special cases, we give upper and lower bounds on the minimum size of a
covering by zones. We also consider the computational complexity of those
problems, and establish some hardness results
Nice labeling problem for event structures: a counterexample
In this note, we present a counterexample to a conjecture of Rozoy and
Thiagarajan from 1991 (called also the nice labeling problem) asserting that
any (coherent) event structure with finite degree admits a labeling with a
finite number of labels, or equivalently, that there exists a function such that an event structure with degree
admits a labeling with at most labels. Our counterexample is based on
the Burling's construction from 1965 of 3-dimensional box hypergraphs with
clique number 2 and arbitrarily large chromatic numbers and the bijection
between domains of event structures and median graphs established by
Barth\'elemy and Constantin in 1993
Groups acting on quasi-median graphs. An introduction
Quasi-median graphs have been introduced by Mulder in 1980 as a
generalisation of median graphs, known in geometric group theory to naturally
coincide with the class of CAT(0) cube complexes. In his PhD thesis, the author
showed that quasi-median graphs may be useful to study groups as well. In the
present paper, we propose a gentle introduction to the theory of groups acting
on quasi-median graphs.Comment: 16 pages. Comments are welcom
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