On asteroidal sets in chordal graphs

We analyze the relation between three parameters of a chordal graph G: the number of non-separating cliques nsc(G), the asteroidal number an(G) and the leafage l(G). We show that an(G) is equal to the maximum value of nsc(H) over all connected induced subgraphs H of G. As a corollary, we prove that if G has no separating simplicial cliques then an(G)=l(G). A graph G is minimal k-asteroidal if an(G)=k and an(H)3; for k=3 it is the family described by Lekerkerker and Boland to characterize interval graphs. We prove that, for every minimal k-asteroidal chordal graph, all the above parameters are equal to k. In addition, we characterize the split graphs that are minimal k-asteroidal and obtain all the minimal 4-asteroidal split graphs. Finally, we applied our results on asteroidal sets to describe the clutters with k edges that are minor-minimal in the sense that every minor has less than k edges.Facultad de Ciencias Exacta

Reduced clique graphs of chordal graphs

AbstractWe investigate the properties of chordal graphs that follow from the well-known fact that chordal graphs admit tree representations. In particular, we study the structure of reduced clique graphs which are graphs that canonically capture all tree representations of chordal graphs. We propose a novel decomposition of reduced clique graphs based on two operations: edge contraction and removal of the edges of a split. Based on this decomposition, we characterize asteroidal sets in chordal graphs, and discuss chordal graphs that admit a tree representation with a small number of leaves